The majority of poems one outgrows and outlives, as one outgrows and outlives the majority of human passions.
T. S. EliotWhat a poem means is as much what it means to others as what it means to the author; and indeed, in the course of time a poet may become merely reader in respect to his own works, forgetting his original meaning.
T. S. EliotWhen 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.
T. S. EliotDear Mother, I am getting on nicely in my work at the bank, and like it ... I want to find out something about the science of money while I am at it; it is an extraordinarily interesting subject.
T. S. EliotThe Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying within and attacked from without.
T. S. EliotI do not know much about gods; but I think that the river Is a strong brown god-sullen, untamed and intractable.
T. S. EliotSo I find words I never thought to speak In streets I never thought I should revisit When I left my body on a distant shore.
T. S. EliotWriting every day is a way of keeping the engine running, and then something good may come out of it.
T. S. EliotImmature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.
T. S. EliotAnd they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness.
T. S. EliotThe winter evening settles down With smell of steaks in passageways. Six o'clock. The burnt-out ends of smoky days. And now a gusty shower wraps The grimy scraps Of withered leaves about your feet And newspapers from vacant lots; The showers beat On broken blinds and chimney-pots, And at the corner of the street A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps. And then the lighting of the lamps.
T. S. EliotWhen a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience ?in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes.
T. S. EliotI say to you: Make perfect your will. / I say: take no thought of the harvest, / But only of proper sowing.
T. S. EliotI said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
T. S. EliotThe bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious.
T. S. EliotI 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.
T. S. EliotHonest criticism and sensitive appreciation are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.
T. S. EliotIn order to arrive at what you are not, you must go through the way in which you are not.
T. S. EliotWe might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.
T. S. EliotIf we all were judged according to the consequences Of all our words and deeds, beyond the intention And beyond our limited understanding Of ourselves and others, we should all be condemned.
T. S. EliotWe can say of Shakespeare, that never has a man turned so little knowledge to such great account.
T. S. EliotIf time and space, as sages say, Are things which cannot be, The sun which does not feel decay No greater is than we. So why, Love, should we ever pray To live a century? The butterfly that lives a day Has lived eternity.
T. S. EliotYou will find that you survive humiliation. And that's an experience of incalculable value.
T. S. EliotI suspect that in our loathing of totalitarianism, there is infused a good deal of admiration for its efficiency.
T. S. EliotBut the Church cannot be, in any political sense, either conservative or liberal, or revolutionary. Conservatism is too often conservation of the wrong things: liberalism a relaxation of discipline; revolution a denial of the permanent things.
T. S. EliotWhat profession is more trying than that of author? After you finish a piece of work it only seems good to you for a few weeks; or if it seems good at all you are convinced that it is the last you will be able to write; and if it seems bad you wonder whether everything you have done isnโt poor stuff really; and it is one kind of agony while you are writing, and another kind when you arenโt.
T. S. EliotCats must have three names-an everyday name, such as Peter; a more particular, dignified name, such as Quaxo, Bombalurina, or Jellylorum; and, thirdly, the name the cat thinks up for himself, his deep and inscrutable singular Name.
T. S. Eliot