T. S. Eliot Quotes
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Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
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If you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human being can pour out for you, let a young mother hear you call dear baby 'it.'
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We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.
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My greatest trouble is getting the curtain up and down.
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Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.
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And the wind shall say: 'Here were decent godless people: Their only monument the asphalt road And a thousand lost golf balls.'
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Poetry should help, not only to refine the language of the time, but to prevent it from changing too rapidly.
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The broad-backed hippopotamusRests on his belly in the mud;Although he seems so firm to usHe is merely flesh and blood.
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I am an Anglo-Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature and a royalist in politics.
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There is one who remembers the way to your door: Life you may evade, but Death you shall not. You shall not deny the Stranger.
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Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.
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I don't believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates.
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A woman drew her long black hair out tight, And fiddled whisper music on those strings, And bats with baby faces in the violet light Whistled, and beat their wings, And crawled head downward down a blackened wall.
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There came one who spoke of the shame of Jerusalem And the holy places defiled; Peter the Hermit, scourging with words. And among his hearers were a few good men, Many who were evil, And most who were neither, Like all men in all places.
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The majority of poems one outgrows and outlives, as one outgrows and outlives the majority of human passions.
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I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river Is a strong brown god-sullen, untamed and intractable.
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From a purely external point of view there is no will; and to find will in any phenomenon requires a certain empathy; we observe aman's actions and place ourselves partly but not wholly in his position; or we act, and place ourselves partly in the position of an outsider.
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Quick now, here, now, always- A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything) And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flame are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one.
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When the Stranger says: 'What is the meaning of this city ? Do you huddle close together because you love each other?' What will you answer? 'We all dwell together To make money from each other'? or 'This is a community'?
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We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.
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A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.
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Neither way is better. / Both ways are necessary. / It is also necessary / To make a choice between them.
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To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.
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The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious.