T.S Eliot Quotes - Page 2

About anyone so great as Shakespeare, it is probable that we can never be right; and if we can never be right, it is better that we should from time to time change our way of being wrong.
T.S Eliot
A martyrdom is always the design of God, for His love of men, to warn them and to lead them, to bring them back to His ways. It is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, and who no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of being a martyr.
T.S Eliot
Distracted from distraction by distraction
T.S Eliot
We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.Through the unknown, remembered gateWhen the last of earth left to discoverIs that which was the beginning;At the source of the longest riverThe voice of the hidden waterfallAnd the children in the apple-treeNot known, because not looked forBut heard, half-heard, in the stillnessBetween two waves of the sea.Quick now, here, now, always—A condition of complete simplicity(Costing not less than everything)And all shall be well andAll manner of thing shall be wellWhen the tongues of flames are in-foldedInto the crowned knot of fireAnd the fire and the rose are one.
T.S Eliot
Your burden is not to clear your conscienceBut to learn how to bear the burdens on your conscience.
T.S Eliot
The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.
T.S Eliot
For he will doAs he do doAnd there's no doing anything about it!
T.S Eliot
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,And that is the name that you never will guess;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 contemplationOf the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:His ineffable effableEffanineffableDeep and inscrutable singular Name.
T.S Eliot
The Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat:If you offer him pheasant he would rather have grouse.If you put him in a house he would much prefer a flat,If you put him in a flat then he'd rather have a house.If you set him on a mouse then he only wants a rat,If you set him on a rat then he'd rather chase a mouse.Yes the Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat -And there isn't any call for me to shout it:For he will doAs he do doAnd there's no doing anything about it!
T.S Eliot
He is quiet and small, he is blackFrom his ears to the tip of his tail;He can creep through the tiniest crackHe can walk on the narrowest rail.He can pick any card from a pack,He is equally cunning with dice;He is always deceiving you into believingThat he's only hunting for mice.He can play any trick with a corkOr a spoon and a bit of fish-paste;If you look for a knife or a forkAnd you think it is merely misplaced -You have seen it one moment, and then it is gawn!But you'll find it next week lying out on the lawn.And we all say: OH!Well I never!Was there everA Cat so cleverAs Magical Mr. Mistoffelees!
T.S Eliot
Bustopher Jones is not skin and bones — In fact, he's remarkably fat.He doesn't haunt pubs — he has eight or nine clubs,For he's the St. James's Street Cat!He's the Cat we all greet as he walks down the streetIn his coat of fastidious black:No commonplace mousers have such well-cut trousersOr such an impeccable back.In the whole of St. James's the smartest of names isThe name of this Brummell of Cats;And we're all of us proud to be nodded or bowed toBy Bustopher Jones in white spats!
T.S Eliot
With Cats, some say, one rule is true:Don’t speak till you are spoken to.Myself, I do not hold with that —I say, you should ad-dress a Cat.But always keep in mind that heResents familiarity.I bow, and taking off my hat,Ad-dress him in this form: O Cat!But if he is the Cat next door,Whom I have often met before(He comes to see me in my flat)I greet him with an oopsa Cat!I think I've heard them call him James —But we've not got so far as names.
T.S Eliot
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.
T.S Eliot
He's outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard's.And when the larder's looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke's been stifled,Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair -Ay, there's the wonder of the thing! Macavity's not there!And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty's gone astray,Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way,There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair -But it's useless to investigate - Mcavity's not there!And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:'It must have been Macavity!' - but he's a mile away.You'll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs,Or engaged in doing complicated long-division sums.Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.He always has an alibi, and one or two to spaer:At whatever time the deed took place - MACAVITY WASN'T THERE!And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the timeJust controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!
T.S Eliot
The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,It isn't just one of your holiday games;You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatterWhen I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,Such as Victor or Jonathan, or George or Bill Bailey -All of them sensible everyday names.There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter -But all of them sensible everyday names.But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum -Names that never belong to more than one cat.But above and beyond there's still one name left over,And that is the name that you never will guess;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 contemplationOf the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:His ineffable effableEffanineffableDeep and inscrutable singular Name.
T.S Eliot
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.
T.S Eliot
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.
T.S Eliot
If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?
T.S Eliot
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.
T.S Eliot
If we take the widest and wisest view of a Cause, there is no such thing as a Lost Cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause. We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successors’ victory, though that victory itself will be temporary; we fight rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that anything will triumph.
T.S Eliot
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.
T.S Eliot
And the wind shall say: 'Here were decent Godless people:Their only monument the asphalt roadAnd a thousand lost golf balls.
T.S Eliot
Old Deuteronomy's lived a long time;He's a Cat who has lived many lives in succession.He was famous in proverb and famous in rhymeA long while before Queen Victoria's accession.Old Deuteronomy's buried nine wivesAnd more – I am tempted to say, ninety-nine;And his numerous progeny prospers and thrivesAnd the village is proud of him in his decline.At the sight of that placid and bland physiognomy,When he sits in the sun on the vicarage wall,The Oldest Inhabitant croaks: "Well, of all … Things … Can it be … really! … No! … Yes! … Ho! hi!Oh, my eye!My mind may be wandering, but I confess I believe it is Old Deuteronomy!"Old Deuteronomy sits in the street,He sits in the High Street on market day;The bullocks may bellow, the sheep they may bleat,But the dogs and the herdsman will turn them away.The cars and the lorries run over the kerb,And the villagers put up a notice: ROAD CLOSED —So that nothing untoward may chance to disturbDeuteronomy's rest when he feels so disposedOr when he's engaged in domestic economy:And the Oldest Inhabitant croaks: "Well of all …Things … Can it be … really! … No! … Yes! …Ho! hi!Oh, my eye!My sight's unreliable, but I can guessThat the cause of the trouble is Old Deuteronomy!
T.S Eliot
Between the desireAnd the spasm,Between the potencyAnd the existence,Between the essenceAnd the descent,Falls the Shadow.
T.S Eliot
An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better.
T.S Eliot
What the dead had no speech for, when living,They can tell you, being dead: the communicationOf the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
T.S Eliot
Now that lilacs are in bloomShe has a bowl of lilacs in her roomAnd twists one in her fingers while she talks."Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not knowWhat life is, you who hold it in your hands"; (slowly twisting the lilac stalks)"You let it flow from you, you let it flow,And youth is cruel, and has no remorseAnd smiles at situations which it cannot see."I smile, of course,And go on drinking tea.
T.S Eliot
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.
T.S Eliot
There are three conditions which often look alikeYet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachmentFrom self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference, ... .
T.S Eliot
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance.
T.S Eliot
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool.
T.S Eliot
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.
T.S Eliot
To make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.
T.S Eliot
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spentIf the unheard, unspokenWord is unspoken, unheard;Still is the spoken word, the Word unheard,The Word without a word, the Word withinThe world and for the world;And the light shone in the darkness andAgainst the Word the unstilled world still whirledAbout the center of the silent Word.Oh my people, what have I done unto thee.Where shall the word be found, where shall the wordResound? Not here, there is not enough silence
T.S Eliot
What was to be the value of the long looked forward to,Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenityAnd the wisdom of age? Had they deceived usOr deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?The serenity only a deliberate hebetude,The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secretsUseless in the darkness into which they peeredOr from which they turned their eyes. There is, it seems to us,At best, only a limited valueIn the knowledge derived from experience.The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,For the pattern is new in every momentAnd every moment is a new and shockingValuation of all we have been. We are only undeceivedOf that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.
T.S Eliot
When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience; the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. The latter falls in love, or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes.
T.S Eliot
Time present and time pastAre both perhaps present in time futureAnd time future contained in time past.If all time is eternally presentAll time is unredeemable.What might have been is an abstractionRemaining a perpetual possibilityOnly in a world of speculation.What might have been and what has beenPoint to one end, which is always present.
T.S Eliot
We ask only to be reassuredAbout the noises in the cellarAnd the window that should not have been open
T.S Eliot
The world turns and the world changes,But one thing does not change.In all of my years, one thing does not change,However you disguise it, this thing does not change:The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.
T.S Eliot
Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.
T.S Eliot
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.
T.S Eliot
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.
T.S Eliot
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
T.S Eliot
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
Believe me, Michael:Those who flee from the past will always lose the race.I know this from experience. When you reach your goal,Your imagined paradise of success and grandeur,You will find your past failures waiting there to greet you.
T.S Eliot
To country people Cows are mild,And flee from any stick they throw;But I’m a timid town bred child,And all the cattle seem to know.
T.S Eliot
We have only to conquer Now, by suffering. This is the easier victory.Now is the triumph of the cross.
T.S Eliot
The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence
T.S Eliot
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
T.S Eliot
We had the experience but missed the meaning.
T.S Eliot
No I am not Prince Hamlet nor was meant to be Am an attendant lord one that will do To swell a progress start a scene or two Advise the prince no doubt an easy tool Deferential glad to be of use Politic cautious and meticulous Full of high sentence but a bit obtuse At times indeed almost ridiculous— Almost at times the Fool. I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. 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. I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us and we drown.
T.S Eliot
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.
T.S Eliot
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.
T.S Eliot
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.
T.S Eliot
Those who glitter with the glory of the hummingbird meaning death
T.S Eliot
The journey not the arrival matters.
T.S Eliot
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.
T.S Eliot
Footfalls echo in the memorydown the passage we did not taketowards the door we never openedinto the rose garden. My words echothus, in your mind
T.S Eliot
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?
T.S Eliot
O Light Invisible, we praise Thee! Too bright for mortal vision. O Greater Light, we praise Thee for the less; 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! We thank Thee for the light that we have kindled, The light of altar and of sanctuary; Small lights of those who meditate at midnight And lights directed through the coloured panes of windows And light reflected from the polished stone, The gilded carven wood, the coloured fresco. Our gaze is submarine, our eyes look upward And see the light that fractures through unquiet water. We see the light but see not whence it comes. O Light Invisible, we glorify Thee!
T.S Eliot