T.S. Eliot

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

“We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet’s difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate predecessors; we endeavour to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed. Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously. And I do not mean the impressionable period of adolescence, but the period of full maturity.”

“Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word...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?”

“In my end is my beginning.”

“You say I am repeating Something I have said before. I shall say it again.Shall I say it agian? In order to arrive there,To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.In order to arrive at what you do not knowYou must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.In order to possess what you do not possessYou must go by the way of dispossession.In order to arrive at what you are notYou must go through the way in which you are not.And what you do not know is the only thing you knowAnd what you own is what you do not own And where you are is where you are not.”

“To make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”

“Oxford is very pretty, but I don't like to be dead.”

“I have heard the key Turn in the door once and turn once only We think of the key, each in his prison Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison”

“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.”

“We do not know until the shell breaks what kind of egg we have been sitting on.”

“Gentile or JewO you who turn the wheel and look to windward,Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.”

“The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.O perpetual revolution of configured stars,O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,O world of spring and autumn, birth and dyingThe 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.All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.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?The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuriesBring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.”

“So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years-Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres-Trying to use words, and every attemptIs a wholy new start, and a different kind of failureBecause one has only learnt to get the better of wordsFor the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in whichOne is no longer disposed to say it. And so each ventureIs a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,With shabby equipment always deterioratingIn the general mess of imprecision of feeling,Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquerBy strength and submission, has already been discoveredOnce or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hopeTo emulate - but there is no competition -There is only the fight to recover what has been lostAnd found and lost again and again: and now, under conditionsThat seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”

“Between the desireAnd the spasm,Between the potencyAnd the existence,Between the essenceAnd the descent,Falls the Shadow.This is the way the world ends.from "The Hollow Man”

“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, ... .”

“I decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of the fragments of the afternoon might be collected, and I concentrated my attention with careful subtlety to this end.”

“I am moved by fancies that are curledAround these images, and cling:The notion of some infinitely gentleInfinitely suffering thing.Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;The worlds revolve like ancient womenGathering fuel in vacant lots.”

“that's not what I meant at all... that's not it at all.”

“For he will doAs he do doAnd there's no doing anything about it!- The Rum Tum Tugger”

“To whom I owe the leaping delightThat quickens my senses in our wakingtimeAnd the rhythm that governs the repose of our sleepingtime,the breathing in unison.Of lovers whose bodies smell of each otherWho think the same thoughts without need of speech,And babble the same speech without need of meaning...No peevish winter wind shall chillNo sullen tropic sun shall witherThe roses in the rose-garden which is ours and ours onlyBut this dedication is for others to read:These are private words addressed to you in public.”

“The journey not the arrival matters.”

“Here we go round the prickly pearPrickly pear prickly pearHere we go round the prickly pearAt five o’clock in the morning.Between the ideaAnd the realityBetween the motionAnd the actFalls the Shadow For Thine is the KingdomBetween the conceptionAnd the creationBetween the emotionAnd the responseFalls the Shadow Life is very longBetween the desireAnd the spasmBetween the potencyAnd the existenceBetween the essenceAnd the descentFalls the Shadow For Thine is the KingdomFor Thine isLife isFor Thine is theThis is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsNot with a bang but a whimper.”

“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.Where is the Life we have lost in living?Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?”

“Winter kept us warm, coveringEarth in forgetful snow”

“So I find words I never thought to speakIn streets I never thought I should revisitWhen I left my body on a distant shore.”

“Because these wings are no longer wings to fly But merely vans to beat the airThe air which is now thoroughly small and drySmaller and dryer than the willTeach us to care and not to careTeach us to sit still”

“The essential advantage for a poet is not to have a beautiful world with which to deal; it is to be able to see beneath both beauty and ugliness; to see the boredom, and the horror, and the glory.”

“He who was living is now deadWe who were living are now dyingWith a little patience.”

“Pray for those who chose and oppose”

“No place of grace for those who avoid the faceNo time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice”

“Lord, I am not worthyLord, I am not worthybut speak the word only.”

“Between the conceptionAnd the creationBetween the emotionAnd the responseFalls the Shadow”

“Eyes I dare not meet in dreamsIn death's dream kingdom”

“Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think”

“The lady of situations.”

“Your shadow at morning striding behind youOr your shadow at evening rising to meet you;”

“Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair-”

“The morning comes to consciousness”

“I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.”

“Is it perfume from a dressThat makes me so digress?”

“All cases are unique, and very similar to others.”

“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.”

“she laughed I was aware of becoming involvedin her laughter and being part of it, until herteeth were only accidental stars with a talentfor squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps,inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finallyin the dark caverns of her throat, bruised bythe ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiterwith trembling hands was hurriedly spreadinga pink and white checked cloth over the rustygreen iron table, saying: "If the lady andgentleman wish to take their tea in the garden,if the lady and gentleman wish to take theirtea in the garden ..." I decided that if theshaking of her breasts could be stopped, some ofthe fragments of the afternoon might be collected,and I concentrated my attention with carefulsubtlety to this end.”

“Time present and time past / are both perhaps present in time future.”

“Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third.”

“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;I know the voices dying with a dying fall,Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume?”

“Radio is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.”

“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.—T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets (Gardners Books; Main edition, April 30, 2001) Originally published 1943.”

“Destiny waits in the hand of god, shaping the still unshapen..”

“A cold coming we had of it,Just the worst time of the yearFor a journey, and such a long journey:The ways deep and the weather sharp,The very dead of winter.And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,Lying down in the melting snow.There were times we regrettedThe summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,And the silken girls bringing sherbet.Then the camel men cursing and grumblingAnd running away, and wanting their liquor and women,And the night fires going out, and the lack of shelters,And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendlyAnd the villages dirty and charging high prices:A hard time we had of it.At the end we preferred to travel all night,Sleeping in snatches,With the voices singing in our ears, sayingThat this was all folly.Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,And three trees on the low sky,And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,And feet kicking the empty wine-skins,But there was no information, and so we continuedAnd arrived at evening, not a moment too soonFinding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.All this was a long time ago, I remember,And I would do it again, but set downThis set downThis: were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,But had thought they were different; this Birth wasHard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,With an alien people clutching their gods.I should be glad of another death.”