T. S. Eliot Quotes
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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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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.
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We see the light but see not whence it comes. O Light Invisible, we glorify Thee!
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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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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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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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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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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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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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I have heard the key Turn in the door once and turn once only We think of the key, each in his prison Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison.
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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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Between the desireAnd the spasmBetween the potencyAnd the existenceBetween the essenceAnd the descentFalls the Shadow .
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It's strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words.
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The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.
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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 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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Poetry should help, not only to refine the language of the time, but to prevent it from changing too rapidly.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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Neither way is better. / Both ways are necessary. / It is also necessary / To make a choice between them.
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April is the cruellest month.