T. S. Eliot Quotes
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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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We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
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Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature, will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. And the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities.
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Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs, rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys, advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm, retreating to the corner of arm and knee, eager to be reassured, taking pleasure in the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree.
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Weave the wind. I have no ghosts,An old man in a draughty houseUnder a windy knob.
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Between the desireAnd the spasmBetween the potencyAnd the existenceBetween the essenceAnd the descentFalls the Shadow .
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To justify Christian morality because it provides a foundation of morality, instead of showing the necessity of Christian morality from the truth of Christianity, is a very dangerous inversion.
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Those who say they give the public what it wants begin by underestimating public taste and end by debauching it.
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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.
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A dangerous person to disagree with.
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Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.
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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.
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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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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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[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.
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The hippopotamus's day Is passed in sleep; at night he hunts; God works in a mysterious way- The Church can sleep and feed at once.
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As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.
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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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Poetry should help, not only to refine the language of the time, but to prevent it from changing too rapidly.
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I take as metaphysical poetry that in which what is ordinarily apprehensible only by thought is brought within the grasp of feeling, or that in which what is ordinarily only felt is transformed into thought without ceasing to be feeling.
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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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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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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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And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness.