Quotes from T. S. Eliot

I am an Anglo-Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature and a royalist in politics.

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 flame are infoldedInto the crowned knot of fireAnd the fire and the rose are one.

He had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it.

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

Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vicesAre fathered by our heroism. VirtuesAre forced upon us by our impudent crimes.These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

What is the late November doingWith the disturbance of the spring.

I had not thought death had undone so many.Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled.

For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning.

Sudden in a shaft of sunlightEven while the dust movesThere rises the hidden laughterOf children in the foliageQuick now, here, now, always—Ridiculous the waste sad timeStretching before and after.

Because I do not hope to turn againBecause I do not hopeBecause I do not hope to turn.

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swellAnd the profit and loss.

Where is all the knowledge we lost with information?

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think nowHistory has many cunning passages, contrived corridorsAnd issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,Guides us by vanities.

At the still point of the turning world.Neither flesh nor fleshless.

Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs, rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys, advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm, retreating to the corner of arm and knee, eager to be reassured, taking pleasure in the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree.

Footfalls echo in the memoryDown the passage which we did not takeTowards the door we never openedInto the rose garden.

The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do more, and you are not yet decrepit enough to turn them down.

Against the Word the unstilled world still whirledAbout the center of the silent Word.

Here I am, an old man in a dry month,Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.

Home is where one starts from.

And I must borrow every changing shapeTo find expression.

Before a cat will condescend To treat you as a trusted friend, Some little token of esteem Is needed, like a dish of cream.

But at my back from time to time I hearThe sound of horns and motors, which shall bringSweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.O the moon shone bright on Mrs. PorterAnd on her daughterThey wash their feet in soda water.

Hurry up please its time.