Quotes from T. S. Eliot

Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison.

There is no method but to be very intelligent.

And what you thought you came for is only a shell, a husk of meaning from which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled if at all. Either you had no purpose or the purpose is beyond the end you figured And is altered in fulfillment.

A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel reader is not prepared to give.

Trying to use words, and every attempt Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure Because one has only learnt to get the better of words For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling

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 experiences.

Culture may even be described simply as that which makes life worth living.

Quick now, here, now, always-- A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything)

To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one woman's life." T.S. Eliot - The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

Either everything in man can be traced as a development from below, or something must come from above. There is no avoiding that dilemma: you must be either a naturalist or a supernaturalist.

Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?' But O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag-- It's so elegant So intelligent

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death's dream kingdom These do not appear: There, the eyes are Sunlight on a broken column There, is a tree swinging And voices are In the wind's singing More distant and more solemn Than a fading star.

Time past and time future Allow but a little consciousness. To be conscious is not to be in time But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden, The moment in the arbour where the rain beat, The moment in the draughty church at smokefall Be remembered; involved with past and future. Only through time time is conquered.

And voices are In the wind's singing More distant and more solemn Than a fading star.

He, the young man carbuncular, arrives, A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare, One of the low on whom assurance sits As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.

You dozed, and watched the night revealing The thousand sordid images Of which your soul was constituted;

Descend lower, descend only Into the world of perpetual solitude, World not world, but that which is not world, Internal darkness, deprivation And destitution of all property, Desiccation of the world of sense, Evacuation of the world of fancy, Inoperancy of the world of spirit;

LAVINIA: Oh Edward! The point is, that since I've been away I see that I've taken you much too seriously. And now I can see how absurd you are. EDWARD: That is a very serious conclusion to have arrived at in...how many?...thirty-two hours.

He who was living is now dead. We who were living are now dying.

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. T.S. Eliot The Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock

Without Christianity we might, of course, merely sink into an apathetic decline

His soul stretched tight across the skies That fade behind a city block, Or trampled by insistent feet At four and five and six o'clock;

For us there is only the trying.