T. S. Eliot Quotes

And right action is freedom From past and future also.

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.

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky

When a great poet has lived, certain things have been done once for all, and cannot be achieved again.

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.

There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.

I am moved by fancies that are curled, around these images and cling, the notion of some infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing.

And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor - And this, and so much more? -

Poetry should help, not only to refine the language of the time, but to prevent it from changing too rapidly.

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river is a strong brown god-sullen, untamed and intractable, Patient to some degree, at first recognized as a frontier; Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce; Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges. The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten By the dwellers in cities-ever, however, implacable. Keeping his seasons, and rages, destroyer, reminder Of what men choose to forget. Unhonored, unpropitiated By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.

At the still point, there the dance is.

music heard so deeply That it is not heard at all, but you are the music While the music lasts.

There is no such thing as a lost cause, because there is no such thing as a gained cause

It seems just possible that a poem might happen to a very young man: but a poem is not poetry -That is a life.

All dash to and fro in motor cars. Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere.

It is impossible to design a system so perfect that no one needs to be good.

Cling, swing, Spring, sing, Swing up into the apple tree.

Gradually we come to admit that Shakespeare understands a greater extent and variety of human life than Dante; but that Dante understands deeper degrees of degradation and higher degrees of exaltation.

If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the 'dear deceit' of beauty.

Envy is everywhere. Who is without envy? And most people Are unaware or unashamed of being envious.

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

That meddling in other people's affairs...formerly conducted by the most discreet intrigue is now openly advocated under the name of intervention.

The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion.

In a mind charged with an eager purpose and an unfinished vindictiveness, there is no room for new feelings.

Hell is oneself, hell is alone, the other figures in it merely projections. There is nothing to escape from and nothing to escape to. One is always alone.

The Civil War is not ended: I question whether any serious civil war ever does end.

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

You have to risk going too far to discover just how far you can really go.

If we are moved by a poem, it has meant something, perhaps something important, to us; if we are not moved, then it is, as poetry, meaningless.

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.

Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow Life is very long Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom For Thine is Life is For Thine is the This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.

Old men ought to be explorers.

Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow

My name is only an anagram of toilets.

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?

The tendency of liberals is to create bodies of men and women-of all classes-detached from tradition, alienated from religion, and susceptible to mass suggestion-mob rule. And a mob will be no less a mob if it is well fed, well clothed, well housed, and well disciplined.

You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; They called me the hyacinth girl.' —Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence. Od' und leer das Meer.

Between the desire And the spasm, Between the potency And the existence, Between the essence And the descent, Falls the Shadow.

There is no absolute point of view from which real and ideal can be finally separated and labelled.

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.

We learn what poetry is - if we ever learn - by reading it.

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.

If all time is eternally present, all time is unredeemable

A national culture, if it is to flourish, should be a constellation of cultures, the constitutes of which, benefiting each other, benefit the whole.

To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not / You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.