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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.

-T. S. Eliot

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Between The Idea And

T. S. Eliot

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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.

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Think Not Forever Of Yourselves, O Chiefs, Nor Of Your Own Generation. Think Of Continuing Generations Of Our Families, Think Of Our Grandchildren And Of Those Yet Unborn, Whose Faces Are Coming From Beneath The Ground.

Native American

To Each Individual The World Will Take On A Different Connotation Of Meaning-the Important Lies In The Desire To Search For An Answer.

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.

If The Lost Word Is Lost, If The Spent Word Is Spent If The Unheard, Unspoken Word Is Unspoken, Unheard; Still Is The Spoken Word, The Word Unheard, The Word Without A Word, The Word Within The World And For The World; And The Light Shone In The Darkness And Against The Word The Unstilled World Still Whirled About The Center Of The Silent Word. Oh My People, What Have I Done Unto Thee. Where Shall The Word Be Found, Where Shall The Word Resound? Not Here, There Is Not Enough Silence

You Must Not On Any Account Give Me Credit For Being Penetrating. I Have Impressed People That Way Before, And The Result Is Always Disaster.

Yet With These April Sunsets, That Somehow Recall My Buried Life, And Paris In The Spring, I Feel Immeasurably At Peace, And Find The World To Be Wonderful And Youthful Afterall

Love Compels Cruelty To Those Who Do Not Understand Love.

It Is Obvious That We Can No More Explain A Passion To A Person Who Has Never Experienced It Than We Can Explain Light To The Blind.

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

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.

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

Here Between The Hither And The Farther Shore While Time Is Withdrawn, Consider The Future And The Past With An Equal Mind.

It Is Not Enough To Understand What We Ought To Be, Unless We Know What We Are; And We Do Not Understand What We Are, Unless We Know What We Ought To Be.

Each Venture Is A New Beginning, A Raid On The Inarticulate With Shabby Equipment Always Deteriorating In The General Mess Of Imprecision Of Feeling.

So The Darkness Shall Be The Light, And The Stillness The Dancing.

The Usual Dog About The Town Is Much Inclined To Play The Clown.

A Thousand Policemen Directing Traffic Cannot Tell You Why You Come Or Where You Go.

Again I Must Remind You That A Dog's A Dog-a Cat's A Cat.

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.

Ash On An Old Man's Sleeve / Is All The Ash The Burnt Roses Leave, / Dust In The Air Suspended / Marks The Place Where A Story Ended.

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.

Sometimes Things Become Possible If We Want Them Bad Enough.

To Do The Useful Thing, To Say The Courageous Thing, To Contemplate The Beautiful Thing: That Is Enough For One Man's Life.

Because I Know That Time Is Always Time And Place Is Always Place And Only Place. And What Is Actual Is Actual Only For One Time. And Only For One Place. I Rejoice That Things Are As They Are.

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.

You Have To Risk Going Too Far To Discover Just How Far You Can Really Go.

Poetry May Make Us From Time To Time A Little More Aware Of The Deeper, Unnamed Feelings Which Form The Substratum Of Our Being, To Which We Rarely Penetrate; For Our Lives Are Mostly A Constant Evasion Of Ourselves.

History May Be Servitude. History May Be Freedom. See, Now They Vanish. The Faces And Places, With The Self Which, As It Could, Loved Them, To Become Renewed, Transfigured, In Another Pattern.

An Editor Should Tell The Author His Writing Is Better Than It Is. Not A Lot Better, A Little Better.

In Our Rhythm Of Earthly Life We Tire Of Light. We Are Glad When The Day Ends, When The Play Ends; And Ecstasy Is Too Much Pain.

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.

I Believe The Moment Of Birth Is When We Have Knowledge Of Death I Believe The Season Of Birth Is The Season Of Sacrifice.

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.

And Indeed There Will Be Time To Wonder, "do I Dare?" And, "do I Dare?" Time To Turn Back And Descend The Stair, With A Bald Spot In The Middle Of My Hair.

We Shall Not Cease From Exploration And The End Of All Our Exploring Will Be To Arrive Where We Started And Know The Place For The First Time. Through The Unknown, Remembered Gate When The Last Of Earth Left To Discover Is That Which Was The Beginning; At The Source Of The Longest River The Voice Of The Hidden Waterfall And The Children In The Apple-tree Not Known, Because Not Looked For But Heard, Half-heard, In The Stillness Between Two Waves Of The Sea.

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.

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

Upon The Glazen Shelves Kept Watch Matthew And Waldo, Guardians Of The Faith The Army Of Unalterable Law.

The Greatness Of Literature Cannot Be Determined Solely By Literary Standards Though We Must Remember That Whether It Is Literature Or Not Can Be Determined Only By Literary Standards.

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.

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

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.

To Men Of A Certain Type The Suspicion That They Are Incapable Of Loving Is As Disturbing To Their Self-esteem As, In Cruder Men, The Fear Of Impotence.

You Will Find That You Survive Humiliation. And That's An Experience Of Incalculable Value.

Thought Provoking

A Condition Of Complete Simplicity (costing Not Less Than Everything)

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

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

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.

If You Do Not Push The Boundaries, You Will Never Know Where They Are.

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

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

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.

The Work Of Creation Is Never Without Travail.

In The Room The Women Come And Go Talking Of Michelangelo.

A Philosophy Can And Must Be Worked Out With The Greatest Rigour And Discipline In The Details, But Can Ultimately Be Founded On Nothing But Faith: And This Is The Reason, I Suspect, Why The Novelties In Philosophy Are Only In Elaboration, And Never In Fundamentals.

Hell Is Oneself, Hell Is Alone, The Other Figures In It Merely Projections. There Is Nothing To Escape From And Nothing To Escape To. One Is Always Alone.

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

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

Men Dislike Being Awakened From Their Death In Life.

There Is No Such Thing As A Lost Cause, Because There Is No Such Thing As A Gained Cause

Humankind Cannot Bear Very Much Reality.

I Don't Believe One Grows Older. I Think That What Happens Early On In Life Is That At A Certain Age One Stands Still And Stagnates.

Anxiety Is The Hand Maiden Of Creativity.

We Are Being Made Aware That The Organization Of Society On The Principle Of Private Profit, As Well As Public Destruction, Is Leading Both To The Deformation Of Humanity By Unregulated Industrialism, And To The Exhaustion Of Natural Resources, And That A Good Deal Of Our Material Progress Is A Progress For Which Succeeding Generations May Have To Pay Dearly.

The Winter Evening Settles Down With Smell Of Steaks In Passageways.

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

These Are Only Hints And Guesses, Hints Followed By Guesses; And The Rest Is Prayer, Observance, Discipline, Thought And Action.

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.

We See The Light But See Not Whence It Comes. O Light Invisible, We Glorify Thee!

That Was My Way Of Putting It-not Very Satisfactory: A Periphrastic Study In A Worn-out Poetical Fashion, Leaving One Still With The Intolerable Wrestle With Words And Meanings.

I Was Too Slow A Mover To Be A Boxer. It Was Much Easier To Be A Poet.

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.

We Know Too Much, And Are Convinced Of Too Little. Our Literature Is A Substitute For Religion, And So Is Our Religion.

The Purpose Of Literature Is To Turn Blood Into Ink.

The Darkness Declares The Glory Of Light.

Life Is Long Between The Desire And The Spasm.

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

I Gotta Use Words To Talk To You.

When We Read Of Human Beings Behaving In Certain Ways, With The Approval Of The Author, Who Gives His Benediction To This Behavior By His Attitude Towards The Result Of The Behavior Arranged By Himself, We Can Be Influenced Towards Behaving In The Same Way.

We Fight For Lost Causes Because We Know That Our Defeat And Dismay May Be The Preface To Our Successors' Victory, Though That Victory Itself Will Be Temporary; We Fight Rather To Keep Something Alive Than In The Expectation That Anything Will Triumph.

So The Lover Must Struggle For Words.

What Profession Is More Trying Than That Of Author? After You Finish A Piece Of Work It Only Seems Good To You For A Few Weeks; Or If It Seems Good At All You Are Convinced That It Is The Last You Will Be Able To Write; And If It Seems Bad You Wonder Whether Everything You Have Done Isn’t Poor Stuff Really; And It Is One Kind Of Agony While You Are Writing, And Another Kind When You Aren’t.

For You Know Only A Heap Of Broken Images

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

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.

The River Itself Has No Beginning Or End. In Its Beginning, It Is Not Yet The River; In The End It Is No Longer The River. What We Call The Headwaters Is Only A Selection From Among The Innumerable Sources Which Flow Together To Compose It. At What Point In Its Course Does The Mississippi Become What The Mississippi Means?

A People Without History Is Not Redeemed From Time, For History Is A Pattern Of Timeless Moments.

Finding A Way To Live The Simple Life Is One Of Life's Supreme Complications.

The Progress Of An Artist Is A Continual Self-sacrifice, A Continual Extinction Of Personality.

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

Every Nation, Every Race, Has Not Only Its Own Creative, But Its Own Critical Turn Of Mind; And Is Even More Oblivious Of The Shortcomings And Limitations Of Its Critical Habits Than Of Those Of Its Creative Genius.

Turning Wearily, As One Would Turn To Nod Goodbye To Rochefoucauld, If The Street Were Time And He As The End Of The Street.

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.

And The End And The Beginning Were Always There Before The Beginning And After The End.

Sensibility Alters From Generation To Generation In Everybody, Whether We Will Or No; But Expression Is Only Altered By A Man Of Genius.

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

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

We Shall Not Cease From Exploration, And The End Of All Our Exploring Will Be To Arrive Where We Started And Know The Place For The First Time.

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

It's Not Wise To Violate Rules Until You Know How To Observe Them.

Everyone Gets The Experience. Some Get The Lesson.

Of Lovers Whose Bodies Smell Of Each Other Who Think The Same Thoughts Without Need Of Speech

The End Of All Our Exploring Will Be To Arrive Where We Started.

Survival Is Your Strength Not Your Shame.

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

I Think We Are In Rats’ Alley Where The Dead Men Lost Their Bones.

Home Is Where One Starts From. As We Grow Older The World Becomes Stranger, The Pattern More Complicatied Of Dead And Living, Not The Intense Moment Isolated, With No Before And After, But A Lifetime Burning In Every Moment . . .

Intense Moments

Liberty Is A Different Kind Of Pain From Prison.

Should I, After Tea And Cakes And Ices, Have The Strength To Force The Moment To Its Crisis?

Mediocre Writers Borrow; Great Writers Steal.

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.

Religion, As Distinguished From Modern Paganism, Implies A Life In Conformity With Nature. It May Be Observed That The Natural Life And The Supernatural Life Have A Conformity To Each Other Which Neither Has With The Mechanistic Life...a Wrong Attitude Towards Nature Implies, Somewhere, A Wrong Attitude Towards God...[we Should] Struggle To Recover The Sense Of Relation To Nature And To God.

The Overwhelming Pressure Of Mediocrity, Sluggish And Indomitable As A Glacier, Will Mitigate The Most Violent, And Depress The Most Exalted Revolution.

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.

The Dripping Blood Our Only Drink, The Bloody Flesh Our Only Food: In Spite Of Which We Like To Think That We Are Sound, Substantial Flesh And Blood Again, In Spite Of That, We Call This Friday Good.

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.

Accident Is Design / And Design Is Accident / In A Cloud Of Unknowing.

It Seems Just Possible That A Poem Might Happen To A Very Young Man: But A Poem Is Not Poetry -that Is A Life.

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

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.

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

What We Know Of Other People's Only Our Memory Of The Moments During Which We Knew Them.

Cocktail Parties

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

It Is Not Necessarily Those Lands Which Are The Most Fertile Or Most Favored In Climate That Seem To Me The Happiest, But Those In Which A Long Struggle Of Adaptation Between Man And His Environment Has Brought Out The Best Qualities Of Both.

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.

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.

The Nightingales Are Singing Near The Convent Of The Sacred Heart, And Sang Within The Bloody Wood When Agamemnon Cried Aloud, And Let Their Liquid Siftings Fall To Stain The Stiff Dishonored Shroud.

You Do Not Know How Much They Mean To Me, My Friends, And How, How Rare And Strange It Is, To Find In A Life Composed So Much, So Much Of Odds And Ends, (for Indeed I Do Not Love It ... You Knew? You Are Not Blind! How Keen You Are!) To Find A Friend Who Has These Qualities, Who Has, And Gives Those Qualities Upon Which Friendship Lives. How Much It Means That I Say This To You- Without These Friendships-life, What Cauchemar!

No One Can Become Really Educated Without Having Pursued Some Study In Which He Took No Interest- For It Is A Part Of Education To Learn To Interest Ourselves In Subjects For Which We Have No Aptitude.

What Is This Self-inside Us, This Silent Observer, Severe And Speechless Critic, Who Can Terrorize Us, And Urge Us Onto Futile Activity, And In The End, Judge Us Still More Severely For The Errors Into Which His Own Reproaches Drove Us?

If We Are Moved By A Poem, It Has Meant Something, Perhaps Something Important, To Us; If We Are Not Moved, Then It Is, As Poetry, Meaningless.

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

April Is The Cruellest Month.

All Dash To And Fro In Motor Cars. Familiar With The Roads And Settled Nowhere.

I Learn A Great Deal By Merely Observing You, And Letting You Talk As Long As You Please, And Taking Note Of What You Do Not Say.

Today, You're Halfway To 100! Here's To Optimism, Whether It Is Realistic Or Not. Happy 50th Birthday!

And Right Action Is Freedom From Past And Future Also.

In Spite Of All The Dishonour, The Broken Standards, The Broken Lives, The Broken Faith In One Place Or Another, There Was Something Left That Was More Than The Tales Of Old Men On Winter Evenings.

At The Still Point, There The Dance Is.

I Confess . . . That I Am Not Myself Very Much Concerned With The Question Of Influence, Or With Those Publicists Who Have Impressed Their Names Upon The Public By Catching The Morning Tide And Rowing Very Vast In The Direction In Which The Current Was Flowing; But Rather That There Should Always Be A Few Writers Preoccupied In Penetrating To The Core Of The Matter, In Trying To Arrive At The Truth And To Set It Forth, Without Too Much Hope, Without Ambition To Alter The Immediate Course Of Affairs, And Without Being Downcast Or Defeated When Nothing Appears To Ensue.

There's No Vocabulary For Love Within A Family, Love That's Lived In But Not Looked At, Love Within The Light Of Which All Else Is Seen, The Love Within Which All Other Love Finds Speech. This Love Is Silent.

The End Is In The Beginning.

And They Write Innumerable Books; Being Too Vain And Distracted For Silence: Seeking Every One After His Own Elevation, And Dodging His Emptiness.

Redeem The Time. Redeem The Unread Vision Of A Higher Dream.

The Rats Are Underneath The Piles/ The Jew Is Underneath The Lot.

The Chief Danger About Paris Is That It Is Such A Strong Stimulant.

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.

The Fool,fixed In His Folly,may Think He Can Turn The Wheel On Which He Turns.

It Is Impossible To Say Just What I Mean!

An Election Is Coming. Universal Peace Is Declared And The Foxes Have A Sincere Interest In Prolonging The Lives Of The Poultry.

Tradition: How The Vitality Of The Past Enriches The Life Of The Present.

Art Never Improves, But... The Material Of Art Is Never Quite The Same.

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

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.

We Fight To Keep Something Alive Rather Than In The Expectation That Anything Will Triumph.

Our Difficulties Of The Moment Must Always Be Dealt With Somehow, But Our Permanent Difficulties Are Difficulties Of Every Moment.

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.

I Shall Not Want Honor In Heaven For I Shall Meet Sir Philip Sidney And Have Talk With Coriolanus And Other Heroes Of That Kidney.

Disillusion Can Become Itself An Illusion If We Rest In It.

Disillusionment

With Out Some Kind Of God, Man Is Not Very Intresting

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

Knowledge Is Invariably A Matter Of Degree: You Cannot Put Your Finger Upon Even The Simplest Datum And Say This We Know.

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

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

Success Is Relative. It Is What We Make Of The Mess We Have Made Of Things.

I Am No Prophet-and Here's No Great Matter.

To Become What You Are Not, Behave As You Do 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

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.

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.

There Are Three Conditions Which Often Look Alike Yet Differ Completely, Flourish In The Same Hedgerow: Attachment To Self And To Things And To Persons, Detachment From Self And From Things And From Persons; And, Growing Between Them, Indifference, ... .

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

A Good Half Of The Effort Of Understanding What The Indian Philosophers Were After - And Their Subtleties Make Most Of The Great European Philosophers Look Like Schoolboys.

We Must Learn To Suffer More.

Turn Things You've Always Wanted To Do, Into Things You've Done

You Can Evade Life, But You Can Not Evade Death.

[on The Waste Land:] Various Critics Have Done Me The Honor To Interpret The Poem In Terms Of Criticism Of The Contemporary World, Have Considered It, Indeed, As An Important Bit Of Social Criticism. To Me It Was Only The Relief Of A Personal And Wholly Insignificant Grouse Against Life; It Is Just A Piece Of Rhythmical Grumbling.

Only By Acceptance Of The Past, Can You Alter It

Why Should Men Love The Church? Why Should They Love Her Laws? She Tells Them Of Life And Death, And Of All That They Would Forget.

He Had A Mind So Fine That No Idea Could Violate It

To Approach The Stranger Is To Invite The Unexpected, Release A New Force, Let The Genie Out Of The Bottle. It Is To Start A New Train Of Events That Is Beyond Your Control.

One Of The Surest Tests Of The Superiority Or Inferiority Of A Poet Is The Way In Which A Poet Borrows. Immature Poets Imitate Mature Poets Steal Bad Poets Deface What They Take And Good Poets Make It Into Something Better Or At Least Something Different. The Good Poet Welds His Theft Into A Whole Of Feeling Which Is Unique Utterly Different Than That From Which It Is Torn The Bad Poet Throws It Into Something Which Has No Cohesion. A Good Poet Will Usually Borrow From Authors Remote In Time Or Alien In Language Or Diverse In Interest.

Stealing Things

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.

Macavity, Macavity, There's No One Like Macavity, There Never Was A Cat Of Such Deceitfulness And Sauvity.

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

These Fragments I Have Shored Against My Ruins

The Name That No Human Research Can Discover-- But The Cat Himself Knows, And Will Never Confess. When You Notice A Cat In Profound Meditation, The Reason, I Tell You, Is Always The Same: His Mind Is Engaged In A Rapt Contemplation Of The Thought, Of The Thought, Of The Thought Of His Name: His Ineffable Effable Effanineffable Deep And Inscrutable Singular Name.

Love Is The Unfamiliar Name Behind The Hands That Wove The Intolerable Shirt Of Flame Which Human Power Cannot Remove.

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

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

It Is Self-evident That St. Louis Affected Me More Deeply Than Any Other Environment Has Ever Done. I Feel That There Is Something In Having Passed One's Childhood Beside The Big River, Which Is Incommunicable To Those People Who Have Not. I Consider Myself Fortunate To Have Been Born Here, Rather Than In Boston, Or New York, Or London.

Not Less Of Love, But Expanding Of Love Beyond Desire, And So Liberation From The Future As Well As The Past.

Weave, Weave The Sunlight In Your Hair-

What Have We Given? My Friend, Blood Shaking My Heart The Awful Daring Of A Moment's Surrender Which An Age Of Prudence Can Never Retract By This, And This Only, We Have Existed.

Now That The Lilacs Are In Bloom She Has A Bowl Of Lilacs In Her Room

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