T. S. Eliot Quotes
-
And I have known the eyes already, known them all - The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,Then how should I beginTo spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
-
The majority of mankind is lazy-minded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith; and when the ordinary man calls himself a sceptic or an unbeliever, that is ordinarily a simple pose, cloaking a disinclination to think anything out to a conclusion.
-
The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do more, and you are not yet decrepit enough to turn them down.
-
I would meet you upon this honestly. I that was near your heart was removed therefrom To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition. I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it Since what is kept must be adulterated? I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch: How should I use them for your closer contact?
-
Old Deuteronomy's lived a long time; He's a Cat who has lived many lives in succession. He was famous in proverb and famous in rhyme A long while before Queen Victoria's accession.
-
All significant truths are private truths. As they become public they cease to become truths; they become facts, or at best, part of the public character; or at worst, catchwords.
-
O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart: for the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.
-
Weave the wind. I have no ghosts,An old man in a draughty houseUnder a windy knob.
-
Those who say they give the public what it wants begin by underestimating public taste and end by debauching it.
-
The broad-backed hippopotamusRests on his belly in the mud;Although he seems so firm to usHe is merely flesh and blood.
-
Between the desireAnd the spasmBetween the potencyAnd the existenceBetween the essenceAnd the descentFalls the Shadow .
-
Those who have crossedWith direct eyes, to death's other KingdomRemember us - if at all - not as lostViolent souls, but onlyAs the hollow menThe stuffed men.
-
A good deal of confusion could be avoided, if we refrained from setting before the group, what can be the aim only of the individual; and before society as a whole, what can be the aim only of the group.
-
[On The Waste Land:] Various critics have done me the honor to interpret the poem in terms of criticism of the contemporary world, have considered it, indeed, as an important bit of social criticism. To me it was only the relief of a personal and wholly insignificant grouse against life; it is just a piece of rhythmical grumbling.
-
Ambition fortifies the will of man to become ruler over other men: it operates with deception, cajolery, and violence, it is the action of impurity upon impurity.
-
They say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known (I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone) Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!
-
All time is eternal, moving inexorably toward an end which we believe is a result of our actions, but over which our control is mere illusion.
-
Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.
-
The more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates.
-
When war is not just it is subsequently justified; so it becomes many things. In reality, an unjust war is merely piracy. It consists of piracy, ego and, more than anything, money. War is our century's prostitution.
-
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
-
Let these words answer For what is done, not to be done again May the judgement not be too heavy upon us
-
You neglect and belittle the desert. The desert is not remote in southern tropics The desert is not only around the corner, The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you, The desert is in the heart of your brother.
-
The Pekes and the Pollicles, everyone knows, Are proud and implacable, passionate foes; It is always the same, wherever one goes. And the Pugs and the Poms, although most people say that they do not like fighting, will often display Every symptom of wanting to join in the fray. And they Bark bark bark bark bark bark Until you can hear them all over the park.