Quotes from T. S. Eliot

When we talk about Poetry, with a capital P, we are apt to think only of the more intense emotions or the more magical phrase: nevertheless there are a great many casements in poetry which are not magic, and which do not open on the foam of perilous seas, but are perfectly good windows for all that.

You are not here to verify, instruct yourself, or inform curiosity or carry report. You are here to kneel where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more than an order of words, the conscious occupation of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.

I came to the conclusion seeing also that the 'influence' of Brahmin and Buddhist thought upon Europe, as in Schopenhauer, Hartmann, and Deussen, had largely been through romantic misunderstanding that my only hope of really penetrating to the heart of that mystery would lie in forgetting how to think and feel as an American or a European: which, for practical as well as sentimental reasons, I did not wish to do.

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark, The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant

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.

Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing

How wild it was, to let it be.

Because I know that time is always time And place is always and only place And what is actual is only for one time And only for one place I rejoice that things are as they are and I renounce the blessed face And renounce the voice Because I cannot hope to turn again Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something Upon which to rejoice

The nymphs are departed.

A toothache, or a violent passion, is not necessarily diminished by our knowledge of its causes, its character, its importance or insignificance.

Samo oni koji rizikuju da odu predaleko mogu da otkriju dokle ?ovek zaista može da stigne.

At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea

For us there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know What life is, you who hold it in your hands';

and we conclude that the division between Conservative verse and vers libre does not exist, for there is only good verse, bad verse, and chaos.

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.

We are the music while the music lasts.

It [The Great Gatsby] has interested and excited me more than any new novel I have seen, either English or American, for a number of years....it seems to me to be the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James.

Old men ought to be explorers

We understand the ordinary business of living, We know how to work the machine

You have to risk going too far to discover how far you can go.

HARRY: But I thought I might escape from one life to another, And it may be all one life, with no escape.

I hope there's something wrong me. Because if there isn't something wrong me it means there's something wrong with the world. That's terrifying. So I'd like to think there's something wrong with me that can be made right.

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.