|
T. S. Eliot - From the Accidents category:
Accident is design / And design is accident / In a cloud of unknowing. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Accomplishment category:
To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Advice category:
- The Rock, 1934...
I say to you: Make perfect your will. / I say: take no thought of the harvest, / But only of proper sowing. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Aging category:
The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do more, and you are not yet decrepit enough to turn them down. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Ambition category:
If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are? (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Anxiety category:
Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Appreciation category:
No poet, no artist of any sort, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Art category:
Art is the escape from personality. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Art category:
Art never improves, but... the material of art is never quite the same. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Awareness category:
- The Family Reunion, 1939...
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. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Beginning category:
What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Beginning category:
Every moment is a fresh beginning. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Books category:
It is certain that a book is not harmless merely because no one is consciously offended by it. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Business category:
Business today consists in persuading crowds. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Choices category:
Neither way is better. / Both ways are necessary. / It is also necessary / To make a choice between them. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Composition category:
The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Contemplation category:
- The Rock, 1934...
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. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Contrasts category:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Criticism category:
We 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. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Desire category:
That is the worst moment, when you feel you have lost / The desires for all that was most desirable, / Before you are contented with what you can desire; / Before you know what is left to be desired; / And you go on wishing that you could desire / What desire has left behind. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Destiny category:
We must always take risks. That is our destiny. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Difficulty category:
My greatest trouble is getting the curtain up and down. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Drunkenness category:
It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous. / Resign yourself to be the fool you are. / You will find that you survive humiliation / And that's an experience of incalculable value. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Eccentricity category:
For some are sane and some are mad / And some are good and some are bad / And some are better, some are worse - / But all may be described in verse. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Editing category:
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Editing category:
An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Effort category:
For us it is just the trying: all the rest is not our business. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Emotion category:
Artistic inevitability lies in the complete adequacy of the external to the emotion. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Emotion category:
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling, / Undisciplined squads of emotion. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Experience category:
We had the experience, but we missed the meaning. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Experience category:
Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Exploration category:
We shall not cease from exploration / And in the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Fantasy category:
I am moved by fancies that are curled /
Around these images, and cling: /
The notion of some infinitely gentle /
Infinitely suffering thing. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Fear category:
And I will show you something different from either your shadow at morning striding behind you or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Fire category:
The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Growth category:
April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Hope category:
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope, / For hope would be hope for the wrong thing. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Humanity category:
Human kind cannot bear very much reality. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Idealism category:
There is no absolute point of view from which real and ideal can be finally separated and labelled. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Ideas category:
Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act, falls the shadow. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Illusion category:
Disillusion can become itself an illusion
if we rest in it. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Importance category:
-The Cocktail Party, 1949...
Half the harm that is done in this world / Is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm - but the harm does not interest them... Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle / To think well of themselves. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Impossibilities category:
It is impossible to say just what I mean! (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Information category:
-The Rock, 1934...
Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Intellect category:
There is no method but to be very intelligent. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Interpretation category:
The soul is so far from being a monad that we have not only to interpret other souls to ourself but to interpret ourself to ourself. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Journey category:
Footfalls echo in the memory, / Down the passage which we did not take, / Toward the door we never opened / Into the rose-garden. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Journey category:
Home is where one starts from. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Knowledge category:
We can say of Shakespeare, that never has a man turned so little knowledge to such great account. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Knowledge category:
In order to arrive at what you do not know / You must go by a way which is the way
of ignorance. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Life category:
I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Love category:
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, / But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Masters category:
In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Music category:
Music heard so deeply / That it is not heard at all, but you are the music / While the music lasts. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Optimism category:
Let's not be narrow, nasty, and negative. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Passion category:
A toothache, or a violent passion, is not necessarily diminished by our knowledge of its causes, its character, its importance or insignificance. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Perfection category:
The more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Pets category:
I am glad you have a Cat, but I do not believe it is So remarkable a cat as My Cat. My Cat is a Lilliecat Hubvously. What a lilliecat it is. There never was such a Lilliecat. Its Name is JELLYORUM and its one Idea is to be Usefull!! (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Poetry category:
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion; it is not an expression of the personality, but an escape from personality. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Poetry category:
Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Poetry category:
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Poetry category:
Any poet, if he is to survive beyond his 25th year, must alter; he must seek new literary influences; he will have different emotions to express. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Possessions category:
In order to possess what you do not possess / You must go by the way of dispossession. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Progress category:
The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Purpose category:
The role of art is not to express the personality but to overcome it. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Questions category:
What do we live for if not to make life less difficult for each other? (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Reality category:
Human kind / Cannot bear very much reality. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Religion category:
We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Rewards category:
The Nobel is a ticket to one's own funeral. No one has ever done anything after he got it. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Risk category:
Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Rules category:
It's not wise to violate rules until you know how to observe them. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Silence category:
This love is silent. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Silence category:
Where shall the word be found, where will the word / Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Simplicity category:
The most important thing for poets to do is to write as little as possible. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Space category:
It is only in the world of objects that we have time and space and selves. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Standards category:
The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Struggle category:
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not, / You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Success category:
Success is relative: It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Symbols category:
Signs are taken for wonders. / 'We would see a sign!' / The word within a word, unable to speak a word, / Swaddled with darkness. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Technology category:
Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Thought category:
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Time category:
In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Time category:
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Tradition category:
The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence... (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Tradition category:
The historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of literature from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Truth category:
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. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Understanding category:
People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Understanding category:
The circle of our understanding is a very restricted area. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Uniqueness category:
All cases are unique and very similar to others. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Universe category:
Do I dare / Disturb the universe? / In a minute there is time / For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Unknowns category:
The destination cannot be described; / You will know very little until you get there; / You will journey blind. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Words category:
My name is only an anagram of toilets. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Words category:
It is obvious that we can no more explain a passion to a person who has never experienced it than we can explain light to the blind. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Words category:
It's strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Work category:
No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job. (T. S. Eliot)
T. S. Eliot - From the Writing category:
Someone said, 'The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.' Precisely, and they are what we know. (T. S. Eliot)
| 
