T.S Eliot Quotes

I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots;Her coat is one of the tabby kind,with tiger stripes and lepard spots.

A play should give you something to think about. When I see a play and understand it the first time then I know it can't be much good.

LightLightThe visible reminder of Invisible Light.

We ask only to be reassuredAbout the noises in the cellarAnd the window that should not have been open

The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living.

You have now learned to see That cats are much like you and me And other people whom we find Possessed of various types of mind.

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.

Before a Cat will condescendTo treat you as a trusted friend,Some little token of esteemIs needed, like a dish of cream;And you might now and then supplySome caviare, or Strassburg Pie,Some potted grouse, or salmon paste —He's sure to have his personal taste.(I know a Cat, who makes a habitOf eating nothing else but rabbit,And when he's finished, licks his pawsSo's not to waste the onion sauce.)A Cat's entitled to expectThese evidences of respect.And so in time you reach your aim,And finally call him by his name.

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 saythat they do not like fighting, will often displayEvery symptom of wanting to join in the fray.And theyBark bark bark bark bark barkUntil you can hear them all over the park.

There is shadow under this red rock // (Come in under the shadow of this red rock) // 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.

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse

The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always asked to do things and you are not yet decrepit enough to turn them down.

The dove descending breaks the airWith flame of incandescent terrorOf which the tongues declareThe one discharge from sin and error.The only hope, or else despairLies in the choice of pyre or pyre-To be redeemed from fire by fire.Who then devised the torment? Love.Love is the unfamiliar NameBehind the hands that woveThe intolerable shirt of flameWhich human power cannot remove.We only live, only suspireConsumed by either fire or fire.

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance.

Should I after tea and cakes and ices have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

Birth copulation and death. That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks.

For I have known them all already, known them all—Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

But 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.

Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.

Everyone’s alone—or so it seems to me.They make noises, and think they are talking to each other;They make faces, and think they understand each other,And I’m sure they don’t. Is that delusion?Can we only loveSomething created in our own imaginations?

Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.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.They constantly try to escapeFrom the darkness outside and withinBy dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.But the man that is shall shadowThe man that pretends to be.

Unreal friendship may turn to real But real friendship, once ended, cannot be mended

You are not here to verify,instruct yourself, or inform curiosityor carry report. You are here to kneelwhere prayer has been valid. And prayer is more than an order of words, the conscious occupation of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.

Gus is the Cat at the Theatre Door.His name, as I ought to have told you before,Is really Asparagus. That's such a fussTo pronounce, that we usually call him just Gus.His coat's very shabby, he's thin as a rake,And he suffers from palsy that makes his paw shake.Yet he was, in his youth, quite the smartest of Cats —But no longer a terror to mice or to rats.For he isn't the Cat that he was in his prime;Though his name was quite famous, he says, in his time.And whenever he joins his friends at their club(which takes place at the back of the neighbouring pub)He loves to regale them, if someone else pays,With anecdotes drawn from his palmiest days.For he once was a Star of the highest degree —He has acted with Irving, he's acted with Tree.And he likes to relate his success on the Halls,Where the Gallery once gave him seven cat-calls.But his grandest creation, as he loves to tell,Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.

I grow old … I grow old …t I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.tShall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?tI shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.tI have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.tI do not think that they will sing to me.t I have seen them riding seaward on the wavestCombing the white hair of the waves blown backtWhen the wind blows the water white and black.tWe have lingered in the chambers of the seatBy sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brownt Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Though you forget the way to the Temple,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.

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

The lamp hummed:'Regard the moon,La lune ne garde aucune rancune,She winks a feeble eye,She smiles into corners.She smoothes the hair of the grass.The moon has lost her memory.A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,Her hand twists a paper rose,That smells of dust and old Cologne,She is aloneWith all the old nocturnal smellsThat cross and cross across her brain."The reminiscence comesOf sunless dry geraniumsAnd dust in crevices,Smells of chestnuts in the streets,And female smells in shuttered rooms,And cigarettes in corridorsAnd cocktail smells in bars.

What is hell? 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.

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity

Will the veiled sister pray for Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee, Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray For children at the gate Who will not go away and cannot pray: Pray for those who chose and oppose

The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.

The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man

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 togetherTo 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.

April is the cruelest month, breedinglilacs out of the dead land, mixingmemory and desire, stirringdull roots with spring rain.

It is not necessarily those lands which are the most fertile or most favored in climate that seem to me the happiest but those in which a long struggle of adaptation between man and his environment has brought out the best qualities of both.

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

I suppose some editors are failed writers - but so are most writers.

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

Poetry is a mug's game.

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these.

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

The journey not the arrival matters.

One error, in fact, of eccentricity in poetry is to seek for new human emotions to express; and in this search for novelty in the wrong place it discovers the perverse. The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all.

No one can become really educated without having pursued some study in which he took no interest. For it is part of education to interest ourselves in subjects for which we have no aptitude.

When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work it is constantly amalgamating disparate experiences.