T.S. Eliot

“Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself.”

“Time present and time pastAre both perhaps present in time futureAnd time future contained in time past.”

“Because I know that time is always timeAnd place is always and only place...”

“Most contemporary novels are not really "written." They obtain what reality they have largely from an accurate rendering of the noises that human beings currently make in their daily simple needs of communication; and what part of a novel is not composed of these noises consists of a prose which is no more alive than that of a competent newspaper writer or government official. A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel-reader is not prepared to give.”

“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.”

“That meddling in other people's affairs...formerly conducted by the most discreet intrigue is now openly advocated under the name of intervention.”

“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”

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

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

“An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry. ”

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

“Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden.”

“Love is most nearly itselfWhen here and now cease to matter.”

“There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.”

“We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.”

“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”

“The 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.”

“We had the experience but missed the meaning. And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form.”

“James's critical genius comes out most tellingly in his mastery over, his baffling escape from, Ideas; a mastery and an escape which are perhaps the last test of a superior intelligence. He had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it. [...] In England, ideas run wild and pasture on the emotions; instead of thinking with our feelings (a very different thing) we corrupt our feelings with ideas; we produce the public, the political, the emotional idea, evading sensation and thought. [...] James in his novels is like the best French critics in maintaining a point of view, a view-point untouched by the parasite idea. He is the most intelligent man of his generation."(Little Review, 1918)”

“The world revolves like ancient women, gathering fuel in vacant lots.”

“These fragments I have shored against my ruins”

“Who is the third who walks always beside you?When I count, there are only you and I togetherBut when I look ahead up the white roadThere is always another one walking beside youGliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hoodedI do not know whether a man or a woman-But who is that on the other side of you?”

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

“You are the music while the music lasts.”

“And indeed there will be time to wonder, 'Do I dare?', and 'Do I dare?”

“If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it offers you.”

“Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.”

“I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.”

“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 grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”

“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.”

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

“A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,And the dry stone no sound of water. OnlyThere is shadow under this red rock,(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),And I will show you something different from eitherYour shadow at morning striding behind youOr your shadow at evening rising to meet you;I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

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

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

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

“Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.”

“Would it have been worth while,To have bitten off the matter with a smile,To have squeezed the universe into a ballTo roll it towards some overwhelming question”

“Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair.”

“We are the hollow menWe are the stuffed menLeaning togetherHeadpiece filled with straw. Alas!Our dried voices, whenWe whisper togetherAre quiet and meaninglessAs wind in dry grassOr rats' feet over broken glassIn our dry cellarShape without form, shade without colour,Paralysed force, gesture without motion;- The Hollow Men”

“Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”

“Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.”

“What are the roots that clutch, what branches growOut of this stony rubbish? Son of man,You cannot say, or guess, for you know onlyA heap of broken images, where the sun beats,And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,And the dry stone no sound of water. OnlyThere is shadow under this red rock,(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),And I will show you something different from eitherYour shadow at morning striding behind youOr your shadow at evening rising to meet you;I will show you fear in a handful of dust. ”

“Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still.”

“Teach us to care and not to care”