T. S. Eliot Quotes
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I do not believe that any writer has ever exposed this bovarysme, the human will to see things as they are not, more clearly than Shakespeare.
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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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Sister, mother And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea, Suffer me not to be separated And let my cry come unto Thee.
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Much to cast down, much to build, much to restore.
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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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The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence
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As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill.
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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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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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April is the cruellest month.
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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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The world turns and the world changes, But one thing does not change. In all of my years, one thing does not change, However you disguise it, this thing does not change: The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.
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And we all say: OH! Well I never! Was there ever A Cat so clever As Magical Mr. Mistoffelees!
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Because I know that time is always time And place is always and only place And what is actual is actual only for one time And only for one place I rejoice that things are as they are and I renounce the blessèd face
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When forced to work within a strict framework, the imagination is taxed to its utmost and will produce its richest ideas. Given total freedom, the work is likely to sprawl.
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And indeed there will be time To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?" Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair.
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When we read of human beings behaving in certain ways, with the approval of the author, who gives his benediction to this behavior by his attitude towards the result of the behavior arranged by himself, we can be influenced towards behaving in the same way.
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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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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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It's not wise to violate rules until you know how to observe them.
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These modern productions are all very well, But there's nothing to equal, from what I hear tell, That moment of mystery When I made history As Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.
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the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. [He] falls in love or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter, or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes
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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.