T.S Eliot Quotes - Page 3

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

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.

We understand the ordinary business of living, We know how to work the machine

Streets that follow like a tedious argumentOf insidious intentTo lead you to an overwhelming question...

What is actual is actual only for one time and only for one place.

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.

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!

Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.

No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead.

There will be time, there will be timeTo prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.

Success is relative: It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.

Whatever you think, be sure it is what you think; whatever you want, be sure that is what you want; whatever you feel, be sure that is what you feel.

A condition of complete simplicity(Costing not less than everything)

Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important.

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

Distracted from distraction by distraction

The backward look behind the assuranceOf recorded history, the backward half-lookOver the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.

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.

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

Under the penitential gatesSustained by staring SeraphimWhere the souls of the devoutBurn invisible and dim.

The difference between being an elder statesman And posing successfully as an elder statesman Is practically negligible.

Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.

And the wind shall say: 'Here were decent Godless people:Their only monument the asphalt roadAnd a thousand lost golf balls.

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.

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!

We had the experience but missed the meaning.

Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance

Someone said, 'The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.' Precisely, and they are that which we know.

Because I came to seeThat I should never have been a first-rate potter.I didn't have it in me. It's strange, isn't it, That a man should have a consuming passion To do something for which he lacks the capacity? Could a man be said to have a vocation To be a second-rate potter? To be, at best,A competent copier, possessed by the cravingTo create, when one is wholly uncreative?I don't think so. For I came to see, That I had always known, at the secret moments,That I didn't have it in me. There are occasionsWhen I am transported- a different person,Transfigured in the vision of some marvellous creation,And I feel what the man must have felt when he made it.But nothing I made ever gave me that contentment-That state of utter exhaustion and peaceWhich comes in dying to give something life...

What is actual is actual only for one time. And only for one place.

Truth on our level is a different thing from truth for the jellyfish.

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.

Between the desireAnd the spasm,Between the potencyAnd the existence,Between the essenceAnd the descent,Falls the Shadow.

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.

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

Thus with most careful devotionThus with precise attentionTo detail, interfering preparationOf that which is already preparedMen tighten the knot of confusionInto perfect misunderstanding.

For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Think neither fear nor courage saves us.Unnatural vices are fathered by our heroism. Virtues are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

People exercise an unconscious selection in being influenced.

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.

The journey not the arrival matters.

This is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsNot with a bang but a whimper.

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.

It seems that one ought to read in two ways: 1) because of a particular and personal interest, which makes the thing one's own, regardless of what other people think of the book 2) to a certain extent, because it is something one 'ought to have read' but one must be quite clear this why one is reading.

Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity

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.

As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill.

The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

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

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.

In my end is my beginning.

An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better.

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

There is nothing at all to be done about it, There is nothing to do about anything.

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