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.”

“The end is just the beginning”

“But time past is a time forgotten. We expect the rise of a new constellation.”

“Why should we celebrateThese dead men more than the dying?It is not to ring the bell backwardNor is it an incantationTo summon the spectre of a Rose.We cannot revive old factionsWe cannot restore old policiesOr follow an antique drum.These men, and those who opposed themAnd those whom they opposedAccept the constitution of silenceAnd are folded in a single party.Whatever we inherit from the fortunateWe have taken from the defeatedWhat they had to leave us - a symbol:A symbol perfected in death.”

“In a world of fugitives, the person taking the opposite direction will appear to run away.”

“I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.”

“However you disguise it, this thing does not change:The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.”

“It is in Christianity that our arts have developed; it is in Christianity that the laws of Europe--until recently--have been rooted. It is against a background of Christianity that all of our thought has significance. An individual European may not believe that the Christian faith is true, and yet what he says, and makes, and does will all spring out of his heritage of Christian culture and depend upon that culture for its meaning...I do not believe that culture of Europe could survive the complete disappearance of the Christian faith. And I am convinced of that, not merely because I am a Christian myself, but as a student of social biology. If Christianity goes, the whole culture goes.”

“It is impossible to say just what I mean!”

“I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,And in short, I was afraid.”

“The important fact is that for the man the act is eternal, and that for the brief space he has to live, he is already dead. He is already in a different world from ours. He has crossed the frontier. The important fact is that something is done which can not be undone-a possibility which none of us realize until we face it ourselves.”

“We aim at experience in the particular centres in which alone it is evil. We avoid classification. We do not deny it. But when a man is classified something is lost.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Only through time time is conquered”

“Well here again that don't applyBut I've gotta use words when I talk to you.”

“In my beginning is my end.”

“The journey, Not the destination matters...”

“You are here to kneel.”

“I've been born, and once is enough.”

“I see the eyes but not the tearsThis is my affliction.”

“Our second danger is to associate tradition with the immovable; to think of it as something hostile to all change; to aim to return to some previous condition which we imagine as having been capable of preservation in perpetuity, instead of aiming to stimulate the life which produced that condition in its time. . . . a tradition without intelligence is not worth having . . .”

“There was a doorAnd I could not open it. I could not touch the handle.Why could I not walk out of my prison?What is hell? Hell is oneself,Hell is alone, the other figures in itMerely projections. There is nothing to escape fromAnd nothing to Escape to. One is always alone.”

“After the torchlight red on sweaty facesAfter the frosty silence in the gardensAfter the agony in stony placesThe crying and the shoutingPrison and place and reverberationOf thunder of spring over distant mountainsHe was living is now deadWe who were living are now dyingWith a little patience”

“The awful daring of a moment's surrender which an age of prudence can never retract.by this, and only this, we have existed.”

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

“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”

“time past and time futurewhat might have been and what has beenpoint to one end, which is always present.”

“أقول لنفسي إبقي بلا حراكوانتظري بلا أملفالأمل قد يكون تمنيًاللشئ الخطأوانتظري بلا حبفالحب قد يكون حبًاللشئ الخطأهناك بعد إيمانولكن الإيمان والحب والأملكلها في الانتظارانتظربلا فكرلأنك غير معدّ للفكروهكذا سيكون الظلام هو النورواللاحراك هو الرقص”

“I can show you fear in a handful of dust”

“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.”

“We wait, we wait,And the saints and martyrs wait, for those who shall be martyrs and saints.Destiny waits in the hand of God, shaping the still unshapen:I have seen these things in a shaft of sunlight.Destiny waits in the hand of God, not in the hands of statesmenWho do, some well, some ill, planning and guessing,Having their aims which turn in their hands in the pattern of time.”

“HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIMEHURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME”

“Forgive us, O Lord, we acknowledge ourselves as type of the common man,Of the men and women who shut the door and sit by the fire;Who fear the blessing of God, the loneliness of the night of God, the surrender required, the deprivation inflicted;Who fear the injustice of men less than the justice of God;Who fear the hand at the window, the fire in the thatch, the fist in the tavern, the push into the canal,Less than we fear the love of God.”

“The word within a word, unable to speak a word”

“Honest criticism and sensible appreciation are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.”

“O voyagers, O seamen,You who came to port, and you whose bodiesWill suffer the trial and judgement of the sea,Or whatever event, this is your real destination.'So Krishna, as when he admonished ArjunaOn the field of battle. Not fare well,But fare forward, voyagers.”

“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 time and space, as sages say,Are things which cannot be,The sun which does not feel decayNo greater is than we.So why, Love, should we ever prayTo live a century?The butterfly that lives a dayHas lived eternity.”

“It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.”

“Playwriting gets into your blood and you can't stop it. At least not until the producers or the public tell you to.”

“That corpse you planted last year in your garden,'Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?”

“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.”

“Poetry, if it is not to be a lifeless repetition of forms, must be constantly exploring "the frontiers of the spirit." But these frontiers are not like the surveys of geographical explorers, conquered once for all and settled. The frontiers of the spirit are more like the jungle which, unless continuously kept under control, is always ready to encroach and eventually obliterate the cultivated area.”

“He is haunted by a demon, a demon against which he feels powerless, because in its first manifestation it has no face, no name, nothing; and the words, the poem he makes, are a kind of exorcism of this demon.”

“Where shall the word be found, where will the wordResound? Not here, there is not enough silence...”

“The detective story, as created by Poe, is something as specialised and as intellectual as a chess problem, whereas the best English detective fiction has relied less on the beauty of the mathematical problem and much more on the intangible human element. [...] In The Moonstone the mystery is finally solved, not altogether by human ingenuity, but largely by accident. Since Collins, the best heroes of English detective fiction have been, like Sergeant Cuff, fallible.”

“Each day a raid on the inarticulate--T.S. Eliot”

“This is one moment, / But know that another / Shall pierce you with a sudden painful joy.”

“We must remember that what a writer does to people is not necessarily what he intends to do. It may be only what people are capable of having done to them.”