T. S. Eliot Quotations | Page 2

Not fare well, / But fare forward, voyagers.

I like not only to be loved, but to be told I am loved.

In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

If you haven't the strength to impose your own terms upon life, you must accept the terms it offers you.

In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in.

It ends not with a bang, but a whimper.

Clear the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! take stone from stone and wash them.

Because I do not hope to turn again / Because I do not hope / Because I do not hope to turn.

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. . ./ Do I dare/ Disturb the universe?

The dove descending breaks the air / With flame of incandescent terror.

Talent imitates, but genius steals.

...the still point in a turning world.

We ask only to be reassured About the noises in the cellar And the window that should not have been open

The rats are underneath the piles/ The Jew is underneath the lot.

Here were decent godless people; Their only monument the asphalt road And a thousand lost golf balls.

The past and future / Are conquered, and reconciled.

Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair-

The dove descending breaks the air With flame of incandescent terror Of which the tongues declare The one discharge from sin and error. The only hope, or else despair Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre- To be redeemed from fire by fire. Who then devised the torment? Love. Love is the unfamiliar Name Behind the hands that wove The intolerable shirt of flame Which human power cannot remove. We only live, only suspire Consumed by either fire or fire.

The name that no human research can discover-- But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess. When you notice a cat in profound meditation, The reason, I tell you, is always the same: His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name: His ineffable effable Effanineffable Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

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.

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.

I can connect Nothing with nothing

The Rum Turn Tugger is a terrible bore: When you let him in, then he wants to be out; He's always on the wrong side of every door, And as soon as he's at home, then he'd like to get about.

And through the spaces of the dark Midnight shakes the memory As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

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.

What we know of other people's only our memory of the moments during which we knew them.

They don't understand what it is to be awake, / To be living on several planes at once / Though one cannot speak with several voices at once.

The immature poet imitates, the mature poet plagiarizes,

So first, your memory I'll jog, And say: A CAT IS NOT A DOG

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?

It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous. Resign yourself to be the fool you are... ...We must always take risks. That is our destiny...

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many.

In my beginning is my end. In succession Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended, Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass. Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires, Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth Which is already flesh, fur and faeces, Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.

The eastern light our spires touch at morning, The light that slants upon our western doors at evening, The twilight over stagnant pools at batflight, Moon light and star light, owl and moth light, Glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade. O Light Invisible, we worship Thee!

I should have been a pair of ragged claws/ Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

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"? Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger. Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.

Because I know that time is always time And place is always and only place...

To approach the stranger is to invite the unexpected, release a new force, let the genie out of the bottle. It is to start a new train of events that is beyond your control...

Poetry is a mug's game.

Who is the third who walks always beside you? When I count, there are only you and I together But when I look ahead up the white road There is always another one walking beside you Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded I do not know whether a man or a woman -But who is that on the other side of you?

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you Which shall be the darkness of God. . . . So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

And indeed there will be time to wonder, 'Do I dare?', and 'Do I dare?

I say to you: Make perfect your will. / I say: take no thought of the harvest, / But only of proper sowing.

And the end and the beginning where always there, before the beginning and after the end.

Neither way is better. / Both ways are necessary. / It is also necessary / To make a choice between them.

The endless cycle of idea and action, / Endless invention, endless experiment, / Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; / Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; / Knowledge of words, and ignorance of The Word.

We must believe that "emotion recollected in tranquillity" is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration of a very great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not "recollected" and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is "tranquil" only in that it is a passive attending upon the event.

Honest criticism and sensible appreciation are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.

Whatever you do, don't whimper, but take the consequences.

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity, there never was a cat of such deceitfulness and sauvity.

We read many books, because we cannot know enough people.

The overwhelming pressure of mediocrity, sluggish and indomitable as a glacier, will mitigate the most violent, and depress the most exalted revolution.

The difference between being an elder statesman And posing successfully as an elder statesman Is practically negligible.

It's harder to confess the sin that no one believes in Than the crime that everyone can appreciate. For the crime is in relation to the law And the sin is in relation to the sinner.

You must not on any account give me credit for being penetrating. I have impressed people that way before, and the result is always disaster.

Most contemporary novels are not really "written." They obtain what reality they have largely from an accurate rendering of the noises that human beings currently make in their daily simple needs of communication; and what part of a novel is not composed of these noises consists of a prose which is no more alive than that of a competent newspaper writer or government official. A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel-reader is not prepared to give.

Trying to use words, and every attempt Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure Because one has only learnt to get the better of words For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,

The only wisdom we can hope to acquire Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless. The houses are all gone under the sea. The dancers are all gone under the hill.

There are flood and drought over the eyes and in the mouth, dead water and dead sand contending for the upper hand. The parched eviscerate soil gapes at the vanity of toil, laughs without mirth. This is the death of the earth.

We are not here to triumph by fighting, by strata gem, or by resistance, not to fight with beasts as men. We have fought the beast and have conquered. We have only to conquer now, by suffering. This is the easier victory.

Webster was much possessed by death And saw the skull beneath the skin.

Do not let me hear Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly, Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession, Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God. The only wisdom we can hope to acquire Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.

The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula for that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.

Upon the glazen shelves kept watch Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith The army of unalterable law.

Because I do not hope to turn again Because I do not hope Because I do not hope to turn Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope I no longer strive to strive towards such things (Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?) Why should I mourn The vanished power of the usual reign?

Turning Wearily, as one would turn to nod goodbye to Rochefoucauld, If the street were time and he as the end of the street.

Religion, as distinguished from modern paganism, implies a life in conformity with nature. It may be observed that the natural life and the supernatural life have a conformity to each other which neither has with the mechanistic life...A wrong attitude towards nature implies, somewhere, a wrong attitude towards God...[We should] struggle to recover the sense of relation to nature and to God.

But at my back from time to time I hear The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring. O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter And on her daughter They wash their feet in soda water.

Where is the Life we lost in living?

I shall not want Honor in Heaven For I shall meet Sir Philip Sidney And have talk with Coriolanus And other heroes of that kidney.

Think neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices are fathered by our heroism. Virtues are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

We do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test of its value - a test, it is true, which can only be slowly and cautiously applied, for we are none of us infallible judges of conformity.

When comparing works of art, it is important that the art itself, and not the artists, be considered.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

Now that the lilacs are in bloom She has a bowl of lilacs in her room

The dripping blood our only drink, The bloody flesh our only food: In spite of which we like to think That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

What have we given? My friend, blood shaking my heart The awful daring of a moment's surrender Which an age of prudence can never retract By this, and this only, we have existed.

Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.

We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Learning together.

Yeats was the greatest poet of our times . . . certainly the greatest in this language, and so far as I am able to judge, in any language.

I do not approve the extermination of the enemy; the policy of exterminating or, as it is barbarously said, liquidating enemies, is one of the most alarming developments of modern war and peace, from the point of view of those who desire the survival

My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me. 'Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak. 'What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? 'I never know what you are thinking. Think.

Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?'/Let us go and make our visit.

Shape without form, shade without color, Paralyzed force, gesture without motion; Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember us-if at all-not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.

I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids Sprouting despondently at area gates.

These are only hints an guesses... the rest is prayer, observance, discipline, thought, and action.

Each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling.

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.

The Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying within and attacked from without.

I gotta use words to talk to you.

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.

Words move, music moves Only in time; but that which is only living Can only die. Words, after speech, reach Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern, Can words or music reach The stillness...

Shall I part my hair behind Do I dare to eat a peach I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.

That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all.

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.

Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison.

A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel reader is not prepared to give.

We must learn to suffer more.

That was my way of putting it-not very satisfactory: A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion, Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle With words and meanings.

The nightingales are singing near The Convent of the Sacred Heart, And sang within the bloody wood When Agamemnon cried aloud, And let their liquid siftings fall To stain the stiff dishonored shroud.