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And Would It Have Been Worth It, After All, Would It Have Been Worth While, After The Sunsets And The Dooryards And The Sprinkled Streets, After The Novels, After The Teacups, After The Skirts That Trail Along The Floor - And This, And So Much More? -

-T. S. Eliot

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And Would It Have

T. S. Eliot

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And Would It Have Been Worth It, After All, Would It Have Been Worth While, After The Sunsets And The Dooryards And The Sprinkled Streets, After The Novels, After The Teacups, After The Skirts That Trail Along The Floor - And This, And So Much More? -

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Tennyson And Browning Are Poets, And They Think; But They Do Not Feel Their Thought As Immediately As The Odour Of A Rose. A Thought To Donne Was An Experience; It Modified His Sensibility.

If You Aren't In Over Your Head, How Do You Know How Tall You Are?

Artistic Inevitability Lies In The Complete Adequacy Of The External To The Emotion.

I Said To My Soul, Be Still, And Wait Without Hope, For Hope Would Be Hope For The Wrong Thing.

In The Last Few Years Everything I'd Done Up To Sixty Or So Has Seemed Very Childish.

History Has Many Cunning Passages, Contrived Corridors And Issues.

So I Find Words I Never Thought To Speak In Streets I Never Thought I Should Revisit When I Left My Body On A Distant Shore.

The Only Wisdom We Can Hope To Acquire Is The Wisdom Of Humility: Humility Is Endless. The Houses Are All Gone Under The Sea. The Dancers Are All Gone Under The Hill.

That Is Not It At All, That Is Not What I Meant, At All.

I Suspect That In Our Loathing Of Totalitarianism, There Is Infused A Good Deal Of Admiration For Its Efficiency.

The Purpose Of A Christian Education Would Not Be Merely To Make Men And Women Pious Christians: A System Which Aimed Too Rigidly At This End Alone Would Become Only Obscurantist. A Christian Education Must Primarily Teach People To Be Able To Think In Christian Categories.

War Is Not A Life: It Is A Situation, One Which May Neither Be Ignored Nor Accepted.

April Is The Cruellest Month.

The Immature Poet Imitates, The Mature Poet Plagiarizes.

For Love Would Be Love Of The Wrong Thing; There Is Yet Faith, But The Faith And The Love And The Hope Are All In The Waiting.

I Will Show You Fear In A Handful Of Dust." T.s. Eliot We Don't Actually Fear Death, We Fear That No One Will Notice Our Absence, That We Will Disappear Without A Trace.

When The Whole World Is Running Headlong Towards The Precipice, One Who Walks In The Opposite Direction Is Looked At As Being Crazy.

In A World Of Fugitives, The Person Taking The Opposite Direction Will Appear To Run Away.

And Voices Singing Out Of Empty Cisterns And Exhausted Wells.

I Had Seen Birth And Death But Had Thought They Were Different.

The True Church Can Never Fail. For It Is Based Upon A Rock.

Simple And Faithless As A Smile And Shake Of The Hand.

Yeats Was The Greatest Poet Of Our Times . . . Certainly The Greatest In This Language, And So Far As I Am Able To Judge, In Any Language.

Time Present And Time Past Are Both Perhaps Present In Time Future, And Time Future Contained In Time Past. If All Time Is Eternally Present All Time Is Unredeemable.

Because These Wings Are No Longer Wings To Fly But Merely Vans To Beat The Air The Air Which Is Now Thoroughly Small And Dry Smaller And Dryer Than The Will Teach Us To Care And Not To Care Teach Us To Sit Still

Words Move, Music Moves Only In Time; But That Which Is Only Living Can Only Die. Words, After Speech, Reach Into The Silence. Only By The Form, The Pattern, Can Words Or Music Reach The Stillness.

But The Church Cannot Be, In Any Political Sense, Either Conservative Or Liberal, Or Revolutionary. Conservatism Is Too Often Conservation Of The Wrong Things: Liberalism A Relaxation Of Discipline; Revolution A Denial Of The Permanent Things.

A Woman Drew Her Long Black Hair Out Tight, And Fiddled Whisper Music On Those Strings, And Bats With Baby Faces In The Violet Light Whistled, And Beat Their Wings, And Crawled Head Downward Down A Blackened Wall.

It Is Generally A Feminine Eye That First Detects The Moral Deficiencies Hidden Under The 'dear Deceit' Of Beauty.

As We Grow Older, The World Becomes Stranger, The Pattern More Complicated Of Dead And Living.

When The Stranger Says: "what Is The Meaning Of This City? Do You Huddle Close Together Because You Love Each Other?" What Will You Answer? "we All Dwell Together To Make Money From Each Other"? Or "this Is A Community"? Oh My Soul, Be Prepared For The Coming Of The Stranger. Be Prepared For Him Who Knows How To Ask Questions.

All Time Is Unreedemable.

Those Who Talk Of The Bible As A Monument Of English Prose Are Merely Admiring It As A Monument Over The Grave Of Christianity.

When The Gods Know That A God Hath Fallen, With This Kindly Feeling They Do Encourage Him-- Be Thou A God Again And Again.

There Are Flood And Drought Over The Eyes And In The Mouth, Dead Water And Dead Sand Contending For The Upper Hand. The Parched Eviscerate Soil Gapes At The Vanity Of Toil, Laughs Without Mirth. This Is The Death Of The Earth.

Probably, Indeed, The Larger Part Of The Labor Of An Author Composing His Work Is Critical Labor; The Labor Of Sifting, Combining, Constructing, Expunging, Correcting, Testing. This Frightful Toil Is As Much Critical As Creative.

Stand On The Highest Pavement Of The Stair- Lean On A Garden Urn- Weave, Weave The Sunlight In Your Hair.

To Make An End Is To Make A Beginning.

We Should Not Confuse Information With Knowledge.

Men Dislike Being Awakened From Their Death In Life.

You Are The Music While The Music Lasts.

We Took Up Our Positions, In Obedience To Instructions.

Because I Know That Time Is Always Time And Place Is Always And Only Place.

I Think It Was Rather An Advantage Not Having Any Living Poets In England Or America In Whom One Took Any Particular Interest. I Don't Know What It Would Be Like But I Think It Would Be A Rather Troublesome Distraction To Have Such A Lot Of Dominating Presences, As You Call Them, About. Fortunately We Weren't Bothered By Each Other.

We Have All Our Private Terrors, Our Particular Shadows, Our Secret Fears. We Are Afraid In A Fear Which We Cannot Face, Which None Understands, And Our Hearts Are Torn From Us, Our Brains Unskinned Like The Layers Of An Onion, Ourselves The Last.

Television Is A Medium Of Entertainment Which Permits Millions Of People To Listen To The Same Joke At The Same Time, And Yet Remain Lonesome.

The Very Existence Of Libraries Affords The Best Evidence That We May Yet Have Hope For The Future Of Man

Teach Us To Care And Not To Care Teach Us To Sit Still. Pray For Us Sinners Now And At The Hour Of Our Death Pray For Us Now And At The Hour Of Our Death.

I Take As Metaphysical Poetry That In Which What Is Ordinarily Apprehensible Only By Thought Is Brought Within The Grasp Of Feeling, Or That In Which What Is Ordinarily Only Felt Is Transformed Into Thought Without Ceasing To Be Feeling.

Webster Was Much Possessed By Death And Saw The Skull Beneath The Skin.

And All Shall Be Well And/ All Manner Of Thing Shall Be Well/ By The Purification Of The Motive/ In The Ground Of Our Beseeching

If You Desire To Drain To The Dregs The Fullest Cup Of Scorn And Hatred That A Fellow Human Being Can Pour Out For You, Let A Young Mother Hear You Call Dear Baby 'it.'

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.

When Forced To Work Within A Strict Framework, The Imagination Is Taxed To Its Utmost And Will Produce Its Richest Ideas. Given Total Freedom, The Work Is Likely To Sprawl.

And Went On In Sunlight, Into The Hofgarten, And Drank Coffee, And Talked For An Hour.

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 Historical Sense Compels A Man To Write Not Merely With His Own Generation In His Bones, But With A Feeling That The Whole Of Literature From Homer And Within It The Whole Of The Literature Of His Own Country Has A Simultaneous Existence And Composes A Simultaneous Order.

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.

Most Of The Trouble In The World Is Caused By People Wanting To Be Important.

The Naming Of Cats Is A Difficult Matter. It Isn't Just One Of Your Holiday Games. You May Think At First I'm Mad As A Hatter. When I Tell You A Cat Must Have Three Different Names.

My Life Is Light, Waiting For The Death Wind, Like A Feather On The Back Of My Hand.

Before A Cat Will Condescend To Treat You As A Trusted Friend, Some Little Token Of Esteem Is Needed, Like A Dish Of Cream.

We Do Not Pass Twice Through The Same Door Or Return To The Door Through Which We Did Not Pass.

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 Centuries Bring Us Farther From God And Nearer To The Dust.

I Am Moved By Fancies That Are Curled, Around These Images And Cling, The Notion Of Some Infinitely Gentle, Infinitely Suffering Thing.

Art Is The Escape From Personality.

Think Neither Fear Nor Courage Saves Us. Unnatural Vices Are Fathered By Our Heroism. Virtues Are Forced Upon Us By Our Impudent Crimes. These Tears Are Shaken From The Wrath-bearing Tree.

To Believe In The Supernatural Is Not Simply To Believe That After Living A Successful, Material, And Fairly Virtuous Life Here One Will Continue To Exist In The Best-possible Substitute For This World, Or That After Living A Starved And Stunted Life Here One Will Be Compensated With All The Good Things One Has Gone Without: It Is To Believe That The Supernatural Is The Greatest Reality Here And Now.

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.

One Starts An Action Simply Because One Must Do Something.

We Learn What Poetry Is - If We Ever Learn - By Reading It.

It Is Worth While Dying, To Find Out What Life Is.

I Am Glad You Have A Cat, But I Do Not Believe It Is So Remarkable A Cat As My Cat. My Cat Is A Lilliecat Hubvously. What A Lilliecat It Is. There Never Was Such A Lilliecat. Its Name Is Jellyorum And Its One Idea Is To Be Usefull!!

There Is No Escape From Metre; There Is Only Mastery.

Let Us Go Then, You And I, When The Evening Is Spread Out Against The Sky

One Thing You Cannot Know: The Sudden Extinction Of Every Alternative, The Unexpected Crash Of The Iron Cataract. You Do Not Know What Hope Is, Until You Have Lost It. You Only Know What It Is Not To Hope: You Do Not Know What It Is To Have Hope Taken From You Or To Fling It Away, To Join The Legion Of The Hopeless Unrecognized By Other Men, Though Sometimes By Each Other.

The End Is In The Beginning.

I Journeyed To London, To The Timekept City, Where The River Flows, With Foreign Flotations. There I Was Told: We Have Too Many Churches, And Too Few Chop-houses.

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.

But At My Back From Time To Time I Hear The Sound Of Horns And Motors, Which Shall Bring Sweeney To Mrs. Porter In The Spring. O The Moon Shone Bright On Mrs. Porter And On Her Daughter They Wash Their Feet In Soda Water.

At The Still Point, There The Dance Is.

So Far As We Are Human, What We Do Must Be Either Evil Or Good: So Far As We Do Evil Or Good, We Are Human: And It Is Better, In A Paradoxical Way, To Do Evil Than To Do Nothing: At Least We Exist.

In My Beginning Is My End. In Succession Houses Rise And Fall, Crumble, Are Extended, Are Removed, Destroyed, Restored, Or In Their Place Is An Open Field, Or A Factory, Or A By-pass. Old Stone To New Building, Old Timber To New Fires, Old Fires To Ashes, And Ashes To The Earth Which Is Already Flesh, Fur And Faeces, Bone Of Man And Beast, Cornstalk And Leaf.

I Do Not Believe That Any Writer Has Ever Exposed This Bovarysme, The Human Will To See Things As They Are Not, More Clearly Than Shakespeare.

We Do Not Quite Say That The New Is More Valuable Because It Fits In; But Its Fitting In Is A Test Of Its Value - A Test, It Is True, Which Can Only Be Slowly And Cautiously Applied, For We Are None Of Us Infallible Judges Of Conformity.

The Tendency Of Liberals Is To Create Bodies Of Men And Women-of All Classes-detached From Tradition, Alienated From Religion, And Susceptible To Mass Suggestion-mob Rule. And A Mob Will Be No Less A Mob If It Is Well Fed, Well Clothed, Well Housed, And Well Disciplined.

I Must Tell You That I Should Really Like To Think There's Something Wrong With Me- Because, If There Isn't, Then There's Something Wrong With The World Itself-and That's Much More Frightening! That Would Be Terrible. So I'd Rather Believe There Is Something Wrong With Me, That Could Be Put Right.

The Soul Is So Far From Being A Monad That We Have Not Only To Interpret Other Souls To Ourself But To Interpret Ourself To Ourself.

The Hippopotamus's Day Is Passed In Sleep; At Night He Hunts; God Works In A Mysterious Way- The Church Can Sleep And Feed At Once.

I Do Not Know Much About Gods; But I Think That The River Is A Strong Brown God-sullen, Untamed And Intractable.

For Us, There Is Only The Trying. The Rest Is Not Our Business.

The Difference Between Being An Elder Statesman And Posing Successfully As An Elder Statesman Is Practically Negligible.

Bad Poets Imitate, Good Poets Steal.

Talent Imitates, Genius Steals.

Art Serves Us Best Precisely At That Point Where It Can Shift Our Sense Of What Is Possible, When We Know More Than We Knew Before, When We Feel We Have - By Some Manner Of A Leap - Encountered The Truth. That, By The Logic Of Art, Is Always Worth The Pain.

When A Poet's Mind Is Perfectly Equipped For Its Work, It Is Constantly Amalgamating Disparate Experience ?in The Mind Of The Poet These Experiences Are Always Forming New Wholes.

When Comparing Works Of Art, It Is Important That The Art Itself, And Not The Artists, Be Considered.

Now That Lilacs Are In Bloom She Has A Bowl Of Lilacs In Her Room And Twists One In Her Fingers While She Talks. "ah, My Friend, You Do Not Know, You Do Not Know What 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 Remorse And Smiles At Situations Which It Cannot See." I Smile, Of Course, And Go On Drinking Tea.

Cats Must Have Three Names-an Everyday Name, Such As Peter; A More Particular, Dignified Name, Such As Quaxo, Bombalurina, Or Jellylorum; And, Thirdly, The Name The Cat Thinks Up For Himself, His Deep And Inscrutable Singular Name.

A Wrong Attitude Toward Nature Implies, Somewhere, A Wrong Attitude Toward God.

Those Who Say They Give The Public What It Wants Begin By Underestimating Public Taste And End By Debauching It.

Honest Criticism And Sensitive Appreciation Are Directed Not Upon The Poet But Upon The Poetry.

Neither Way Is Better. / Both Ways Are Necessary. / It Is Also Necessary / To Make A Choice Between Them.

Writing Every Day Is A Way Of Keeping The Engine Running, And Then Something Good May Come Out Of It.

Footfalls Echo In The Memory, Down The Passage We Did Not Take, Towards The Door We Never Opened, Into The Rose Garden.

My Greatest Trouble Is Getting The Curtain Up And Down.

There Is, It Seems To Us, At Best, Only A Limited Value In The Knowledge Derived From Experience.

Whatever You Do, Don't Whimper, But Take The Consequences.

Not The Intense Moment Isolated, With No Before And After, But A Lifetime Burning In Every Moment.

Intense Moments

Before And After

Cold Mountain Buddhas Han Shan Wait Without Thought, For You Are Not Ready For Thought: So The Darkness Shall Be The Light, And The Stillness Be Dancing. Whisper Of Running Streams, And Winter Lightning. The Wild Thyme Unseen And The Wild Strawberry, The Laughter In The Garden, Echoed Ecstasy Not Lost, But Requiring, Pointing To The Agony Of Death And Birth.

All Significant Truths Are Private Truths. As They Become Public They Cease To Become Truths; They Become Facts, Or At Best, Part Of The Public Character; Or At Worst, Catchwords.

Signs Are Taken For Wonders. / 'we Would See A Sign!' / The Word Within A Word, Unable To Speak A Word, / Swaddled With Darkness.

Between The Desire And The Spasm, Between The Potency And The Existence, Between The Essence And The Descent, Falls The Shadow.

With Cats, Some Say, One Rule Is True: Don't Speak Till You Are Spoken To.

All Our Knowledge Brings Us Nearer To Our Ignorance.

Between The Idea And The Reality Between The Motion And The Act Falls The Shadow

Envy Is Everywhere. Who Is Without Envy? And Most People Are Unaware Or Unashamed Of Being Envious.

The Greatest Proof Of Christianity For Others Is Not How Far A Man Can Logically Analyze His Reasons For Believing, But How Far In Practice He Will Stake His Life On His Belief.

Dear Mother, I Am Getting On Nicely In My Work At The Bank, And Like It ... I Want To Find Out Something About The Science Of Money While I Am At It; It Is An Extraordinarily Interesting Subject.

Destiny Waits In The Hand Of God, Not In The Hands Of Statesmen.

Where Is All The Knowledge We Lost With Information?

No University Ought To Be Merely A National Institution....the Universities Should Have Their Common Ideals, They Should Have Their Common Obligations Toward Each Other. They Should Be Independent Of The Governments Of The Countries In Which They Are Situated. They Should Not Be Institutions For The Training Of An Efficient Bureaucracy, Or For Equipping Scientists To Get The Better Of Foreign Scientists; They Should Stand For The Preservation Of Learning, For The Pursuit Of Truth, And In So Far As Men Are Capable Of It, The Attainment Of Wisdom.

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.

Humility Is The Most Difficult Of All Virtues To Achieve; Nothing Dies Harder Than The Desire To Think Well Of Self.

We Ask Only To Be Reassured About The Noises In The Cellar And The Window That Should Not Have Been Open

We Must Believe That "emotion Recollected In Tranquillity" Is An Inexact Formula. For It Is Neither Emotion, Nor Recollection, Nor Without Distortion Of Meaning, Tranquillity. It Is A Concentration, And A New Thing Resulting From The Concentration Of A Very Great Number Of Experiences Which To The Practical And Active Person Would Not Seem To Be Experiences At All; It Is A Concentration Which Does Not Happen Consciously Or Of Deliberation. These Experiences Are Not "recollected" And They Finally Unite In An Atmosphere Which Is "tranquil" Only In That It Is A Passive Attending Upon The Event.

Time Past And Time Future Allow But A Little Consciousness. To Be Conscious Is Not To Be In Time.

Liberty Is A Different Kind Of Pain From Prison.

…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.

Anecdote: It Is By No Means Self-evident That Human Beings Are Most Real When Most Violently Excited; Violent Physical Passions Do Not In Themselves Differentiate Men From Each Other, But Rather Tend To Reduce Them To The Same State.

They Don't Understand What It Is To Be Awake, / To Be Living On Several Planes At Once / Though One Cannot Speak With Several Voices At Once.

At The Still Point Of The Turning World. Neither Flesh Nor Fleshless; Neither From Nor Towards; At The Still Point, There The Dance Is.

Do Not Let Me Hear Of The Wisdom Of Old Men, But Rather Of Their Folly, Their Fear Of Fear And Frenzy, Their Fear Of Possession, Of Belonging To Another, Or To Others, Or To God. The Only Wisdom We Can Hope To Acquire Is The Wisdom Of Humility: Humility Is Endless.

Although I Do Not Hope To Turn Again Although I Do Not Hope Although I Do Not Hope To Turn

The Only Hope, Or Else Despair Lies In The Choice Of Pyre Or Pyre - To Be Redeemed From Fire By Fire.

The Definition Of Hell Is A Place Where Nothing Connects With Nothing.

Paint Me The Bold Anfractuous Rocks Faced By The Snarled And Yelping Seas.

A Book Is Not Harmless Merely Because No One Is Consciously Offended By It.

A Wrong Attitude Towards Nature Implies, Somewhere, A Wrong Attitude Towards God, And That The Consequence Is An Inevitable Doom. For A Long Enough Time We Have Believed In Nothing But The Values Arising In A Mechanized, Commercialized, Urbanized Way Of Life: It Would Be As Well For Us To Face The Permanent Conditions Upon Which God Allows Us To Live Upon This Planet.

Quick Now, Here, Now, Always- A Condition Of Complete Simplicity (costing Not Less Than Everything) And All Shall Be Well And All Manner Of Thing Shall Be Well When The Tongues Of Flame Are In-folded Into The Crowned Knot Of Fire And The Fire And The Rose Are One.

Poetry Is Not A Turning Loose Of Emotion, But An Escape From Emotion.

Individual Talent

Poetry Is A Mug's Game.

And Indeed There Will Be Time To Wonder, 'do I Dare?', And 'do I Dare?

In A Mind Charged With An Eager Purpose And An Unfinished Vindictiveness, There Is No Room For New Feelings.

And Through The Spaces Of The Dark Midnight Shakes The Memory As A Madman Shakes A Dead Geranium.

Everyone's Alone - Or So It Seems To Me. They Make Noises, And Think They Are Talking To Each Other; They Make Faces, And Think They Understand Each Other. And I'm Sure They Don't. Is That A Delusion?

A Play Should Give You Something To Think About. When I See A Play And Understand It The First Time, Then I Know It Can't Be Much Good.

Humankind Cannot Stand Reality.

I Have Measured Out My Life With Coffee Spoons.

You Have Learned Enough To See That Cats Are Much Like You And Me.

The Historical Sense Involves A Perception, Not Only Of The Pastness Of The Past, But Of Its Presence

Gradually We Come To Admit That Shakespeare Understands A Greater Extent And Variety Of Human Life Than Dante; But That Dante Understands Deeper Degrees Of Degradation And Higher Degrees Of Exaltation.

Destiny ... A Word Which Means More Than We Can Find Any Definitions For. It Is A Word Which Can Have No Meaning In A Mechanical Universe: If That Which Is Wound Up Must Run Down, What Destiny Is There In That? Destiny Is Not Necessitarianism, And It Is Not Caprice: It Is Something Essentially Meaningful. Each Man Has His Destiny, Though Some Men Are Undoubtedly "men Of Destiny" In A Sense In Which Most Men Are Not.

This Is One Moment, / But Know That Another / Shall Pierce You With A Sudden Painful Joy.

Men Tighten The Knot Of Confusion Into Perfect Misunderstanding.

If Time And Space, As Sages Say, Are Things Which Cannot Be, The Sun Which Does Not Feel Decay No Greater Is Than We. So Why, Love, Should We Ever Pray To Live A Century? The Butterfly That Lives A Day Has Lived Eternity.

In The Mountains, There You Feel Free.

The Last Temptation Is The Greatest Treason: To Do The Right Deed For The Wrong Reason.

Past Art Is Subject To Change.

With Cats, Some Say, One Rule Is True: Don’t Speak Till You Are Spoken To. Myself, I Do Not Hold With That — I Say, You Should Ad-dress A Cat. But Always Keep In Mind That He Resents Familiarity. I Bow, And Taking Off My Hat, Ad-dress Him In This Form: O Cat! But If He Is The Cat Next Door, Whom I Have Often Met Before (he Comes To See Me In My Flat) I Greet Him With An Oopsa Cat! I Think I've Heard Them Call Him James — But We've Not Got So Far As Names.

For Last Year's Words Belong To Last Year's Language And Next Year's Words Await Another Voice.

Where Is The Life We Lost In Living?

I Do Not Approve The Extermination Of The Enemy; The Policy Of Exterminating Or, As It Is Barbarously Said, Liquidating Enemies, Is One Of The Most Alarming Developments Of Modern War And Peace, From The Point Of View Of Those Who Desire The Survival

If You Will Not Have God (and He Is A Jealous God), You Should Pay Your Respects To Hitler Or Stalin.

Between The Idea And The Reality Between The Motion And The Act Falls The Shadow For Thine Is The Kingdom Between The Conception And The Creation Between The Emotion And The Response Falls The Shadow Life Is Very Long Between The Desire And The Spasm Between The Potency And The Existence Between The Essence And The Descent Falls The Shadow For Thine Is The Kingdom For Thine Is Life Is For Thine Is The This Is The Way The World Ends This Is The Way The World Ends This Is The Way The World Ends Not With A Bang But A Whimper.

Poets In Our Civilization, As It Exists At Present, Must Be Difficult...the Poet Must Become More And More Comprehensive, More Allusive, More Indirect, In Order To Force, To Dislocate If Necessary, Language Into Its Meaning.

Every Moment Is A New And Shocking Transvaluation Of All We Have Ever Been.

In Order To Arrive At What You Are Not, You Must Go Through The Way In Which You Are Not.

Any Poet, If He Is To Survive Beyond His 25th Year, Must Alter; He Must Seek New Literary Influences; He Will Have Different Emotions To Express.

Till Human Voices Wake Us, And We Drown.

There Is One Who Remembers The Way To Your Door: Life You May Evade, But Death You Shall Not.

The Yellow Fog That Rubs Its Back Upon The Window-panes The Yellow Smoke That Rubs Its Muzzle On The Window-panes Licked Its Tongue Into The Corners Of The Evening Lingered Upon The Pools That Stand In Drains Let Fall Upon Its Back The Soot That Falls From Chimneys Slipped By The Terrace, Made A Sudden Leap And Seeing That It Was A Soft October Night Curled Once About The House, And Fell Asleep

Fare Forward, Travellers! Not Escaping From The Past Into Different Lives, Or Into Any Future; You Are Not The Same People Who Left That Station Or Who Will Arrive At Any Terminus, While The Narrowing Rails Slide Together Behind You.

The Majority Of Poems One Outgrows And Outlives, As One Outgrows And Outlives The Majority Of Human Passions.

What Is True, Is True Only For One Time And Only For One Place.

Lady Of Silences Calm And Distressed Torn And Most Whole Rose Of Memory Rose Of Forgetfulness Exhausted And Life-giving Worried Reposeful The Single Rose Is Now The Garden Where All Loves End Terminate Torment Of Love Unsatisfied The Greater Torment Of Love Satisfied End Of The Endless Journey To No End Conclusion Of All That Is Inconclusible Speech Without Word And Word Of No Speech Grace To The Mother For The Garden Where All Love Ends.

Home Is Where One Starts From.

If You Find Examples Of Humanism Which Are Anti-religious, Or At Least In Opposition To The Religious Faith Of The Place And Time, Then Such Humanism Is Purely Destructive, For It Has Never Found Anything To Replace What It Has Destroyed.

Dante And Shakespeare Divide The World Between Them. There Is No Third.

Our High Respect For A Well Read Person Is Praise Enough For Literature.

The Past And Future / Are Conquered, And Reconciled.

Some Editors Are Failed Writers, But So Are Most Writers.

Thus With Most Careful Devotion Thus With Precise Attention To Detail, Interfering Preparation Of That Which Is Already Prepared Men Lighten The Knot Of Confusion Into Perfect Misunderstanding, Reflecting A Pocket-torch Of Observation.

The Lot Of Man Is Ceaseless Labor, Or Ceaseless Idleness, Which Is Still Harder.

Men Have Left God Not For Other Gods, They Say, But For No God; And This Has Never Happened Before.

Love Is Most Nearly Itself When Here And Now Cease To Matter.

Let Us Go Then, You And I, When The Evening Is Spread Out Against The Sky Like A Patient Etherised Upon A Table; Let Us Go, Through Certain Half-deserted Streets, The Muttering Retreats 5 Of Restless Nights In One-night Cheap Hotels And Sawdust Restaurants With Oyster-shells: Streets That Follow Like A Tedious Argument Of Insidious Intent To Lead You To An Overwhelming Question … 10 Oh, Do Not Ask, “what Is It?” Let Us Go And Make Our Visit. In The Room The Women Come And Go Talking Of Michelangelo.

So First, Your Memory I'll Jog, And Say: A Cat Is Not A Dog

Half Of The Harm That Is Done In This World Is Due To People Who Want To Feel Important. They Don't Mean To Do Harm. But The Harm Does Not Interest Them.

To Become What You Are Not, Behave As You Do Not.

As She Laughed I Was Aware Of Becoming Involved In Her Laughter And Being Part Of It, Until Her Teeth Were Only Accidental Stars With A Talent For Squad-drill.

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.

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.

Before A Cat Will Condescend To Treat You As A Trusted Friend, Some Little Token Of Esteem Is Needed, Like A Dish Of Cream; And You Might Now And Then Supply Some Caviare, Or Strassburg Pie, Some Potted Grouse, Or Salmon Paste — He's Sure To Have His Personal Taste. (i Know A Cat, Who Makes A Habit Of Eating Nothing Else But Rabbit, And When He's Finished, Licks His Paws So's Not To Waste The Onion Sauce.) A Cat's Entitled To Expect These Evidences Of Respect. And So In Time You Reach Your Aim, And Finally Call Him By His Name.

Whatever You Think, Be Sure It Is What You Think; Whatever You Want, Be Sure That Is What You Want; Whatever You Feel, Be Sure That Is What You Feel.

When Lovely Woman Stoops To Folly And Paces About Her Room Again, Alone, She Smooths Her Hair With Automatic Hand, And Puts A Record On The Gramophone.

Never Commit Yourself To A Cheese Without Having First Examined It.

A Cold Coming We Had Of It, Just The Worst Time Of The Year For A Journey, And Such A Long Journey: The Ways Deep And The Weather Sharp, The Very Dead Of Winter.

Only Those Who Will Risk Going Too Far Can Possibly Find Out How Far One Can Go.

The Remarkable Thing About Television Is That It Permits Several Million People To Laugh At The Same Joke And Still Feel Lonely.

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Marianne Faithfull

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