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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.

-T. S. Eliot

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Do Not Let Me

T. S. Eliot

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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.

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The Past And Future / Are Conquered, And Reconciled.

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.

We Might Remind Ourselves That Criticism Is As Inevitable As Breathing, And That We Should Be None The Worse For Articulating What Passes In Our Minds When We Read A Book And Feel An Emotion About It, For Criticizing Our Own Minds In Their Work Of Criticism.

Uncorseted, Her Friendly Bust Gives Promise Of Pneumatic Bliss.

Can We Only Love Something Created In Our Own Imaginations? Are We All In Fact Unloving And Unloveable? Then One Is Alone, And If One Is Alone Then Lover And Beloved Are Equally Unreal And The Dreamer Is No More Real Than His Dreams.

I Have Measured Out My Life With Coffee Spoons.

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.

No Generation Is Interested In Art In Quite The Same Way As Any Other; Each Generation, Like Each Individual, Brings To The Contemplation Of Art Its Own Categories Of Appreciation, Makes Its Own Demands Upon Art, And Has Its Own Uses For Art.

Hungry Hatred, Will Not Strive Against Intelligence Self-interest.

Where Shall The Word Be Found, Where Will The Word / Resound? Not Here, There Is Not Enough Silence.

We Can Say Of Shakespeare, That Never Has A Man Turned So Little Knowledge To Such Great Account.

These Fragments I Have Shored Against My Ruins

Past Art Is Subject To Change.

Time Present And Time Past / Are Both Perhaps Present In Time Future.

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.

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

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

Thinking Of The Key, Each Confirms A Prison.

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

That Is The Worst Moment, When You Feel You Have Lost / The Desires For All That Was Most Desirable, / Before You Are Contented With What You Can Desire; / Before You Know What Is Left To Be Desired; / And You Go On Wishing That You Could Desire / What Desire Has Left Behind.

I Should Have Been A Pair Of Ragged Claws/ Scuttling Across The Floors Of Silent Seas.

And Right Action Is Freedom From Past And Future Also.

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.'

There Is No Feeling, Except The Extremes Of Fear And Grief, That Does Not Find Relief In Music.

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.

Time Past And Time Future What Might Have Been And What Has Been Point To One End, Which Is Always Present.

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

There Will Be Time To Murder And Create.

When Oxygen And Sulphur Dioxide Are Mixed In The Presence Of A Filiament Of Platinum, They Form Sulphurous Acid. This Combination Takes Place Only If The Platinum Is Present; Nevertheless The Newly Formed Acid Contains No Trace Of Platinum, And The Platinum Itself Is Apparently Unaffected: Has Remained Inert, Neutral, And Unchanged. The Mind Of The Poet Is The Shred Of Platinum.

A Prose That Is Altogether Alive Demands Something Of The Reader That The Ordinary Novel Reader Is Not Prepared To Give.

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.

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.

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.

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

People Exercise An Unconscious Selection In Being Influenced.

The Bad Poet Is Usually Unconscious Where He Ought To Be Conscious, And Conscious Where He Ought To Be Unconscious.

I Love Reading Another Reader’s List Of Favorites. Even When I Find I Do Not Share Their Tastes Or Predilections, I Am Provoked To Compare, Contrast, And Contradict. It Is A Most Healthy Exercise, And One Altogether Fruitful.

If We Really Want To Pray We Must First Learn To Listen, For In The Silence Of The Heart God Speaks.

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.

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.

Stealing Things

For You Know Only A Heap Of Broken Images

After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness? Think Now History Has Many Cunning Passages, Contrived Corridors And Issues, Deceives With Whispering Ambitions Guides Us By Vanities.

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.

Not Only Every Great Poet, But Every Genuine, But Lesser Poet, Fulfils Once For All Some Possibility Of Language, And So Leaves One Possibility Less For His Successors.

Ambition Fortifies The Will Of Man To Become Ruler Over Other Men: It Operates With Deception, Cajolery, And Violence, It Is The Action Of Impurity Upon Impurity.

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.

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.

You Gave Me Hyacinths First A Year Ago; They Called Me The Hyacinth Girl.' —yet When We Came Back, Late, From The Hyacinth Garden, 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, Looking Into The Heart Of Light, The Silence. Od' Und Leer Das Meer.

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?

Genuine Poetry Can Communicate Before It Is Understood.

Any Religion Is Forever In Danger Of Petrifaction Into Mere Ritual And Habit, Though Ritual And Habit Be Essential To Religion.

No Place Of Grace For Those Who Avoid The Face. No Time To Rejoice For Those Who Walk Among Noise And Deny The Voice.

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.

It Takes So Many Years To Learn That One Is Dead.

Only Through Time Time Is Conquered

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

For Every Life And Every Act Consequence Of Good And Evil Can Be Shown And As In Time Results Of Many Deeds Are Blended So Good And Evil In The End Become Confounded.

But It Seems That Something Has Happened That Has Never Happened Before; Though We Know Not Just When, Or Why, Or How, Or Where. Men Have Left God Not For Gods, They Say, But For No Gods; And This Has Never Happened Before. That Men Both Deny Gods And Worship Gods, Professing First Reason, And The Money, And Power, And What They Call Life, Or Race, Or Dialect.the Church Disowned, The Tower Overthrown, The Bells Upturned, What Have We To Do But Stand With Empty Hands And Palms Upturned In An Age Which Advances Progressively Backwards?

April Is The Cruelest Month, Breeding Lilacs Out Of The Dead Land, Mixing Memory And Desire, Stirring Dull Roots With Spring Rain.

I Have Seen The Moment Of My Greatness Flicker, And I Have Seen The Eternal Footman Hold My Coat, And Snicker, And In Short, I Was Afraid.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Art Is The Escape From Personality.

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

Love Is Most Nearly Itself When Here And Now Cease To Matter. Old Men Ought To Be Explorers Here Or There Does Not Matter We Must Be Still And Still Moving Into Another Intensity For A Further Union, A Deeper Communion Through The Dark Cold And The Empty Desolation, The Wave Cry, The Wind Cry, The Vast Waters Of The Petrel And The Porpoise.

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

Men Live By Forgetting And Woman Live On Memories.

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

For Most Of Us, There Is Only The Unattended Moment, The Moment In And Out Of Time, The Distraction Fit, Lost In A Shaft Of Sunlight, The Wild Thyme Unseen, Or The Winter Lightning Or The Waterfall, Or Music Heard So Deeply That It Is Not Heard At All, But You Are The Music While The Music Lasts

The Sense Of Wellbeing! Its Often With Us When We Are Young, But Then It's Not Noticed; And By The Time One Has Grown To Consciousness It Comes Less Often.

O Father, Father Gone From Us, Lost To Us, The Church Lies Bereft, Alone, Desecrated, Desolated. And The Heathen Shall Build On The Ruins Their World Without God. I See It. I See It.

And Indeed There Will Be Time For The Yellow Smoke That Slides Along The Street Rubbing Its Back Upon The Window-panes; There Will Be Time , There Will Be Time To Prepare A Face To Meet The Faces That You Meet; There Will Be Time To Murder And Create, And Time For All The Works And Days Of Hands That Lift And Drop A Question On Your Plate; Time For You And Time For Me, And Time Yet For A Hundred Indecisions, And For A Hundred Visions And Revisions, Before The Taking Of Toast And Tea.

The End Is In The Beginning.

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

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.

Because I Do Not Hope To Turn Again Because I Do Not Hope Because I Do Not Hope To Turn Desiring This Man's Gift And That Man's Scope I No Longer Strive To Strive Towards Such Things (why Should The Aged Eagle Stretch Its Wings?) Why Should I Mourn The Vanished Power Of The Usual Reign?

Not Fare Well, But Fare Forward

I Grow Old … I Grow Old … I Shall Wear The Bottoms Of My Trousers Rolled.

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

Good Poets Borrow, Great Poets Steal

I Hate University Towns And University People, Who Are The Same Everywhere, With Pregnant Wives, Sprawling Children, Many Books And Hideous Pictures On The Walls ... Oxford Is Very Pretty, But I Don't Like To Be Dead.

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

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

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.

Gin And Drugs, Dear Lady, Gin And Drugs.

Who Is The Third Who Walks Always Beside You? When I Count, There Are Only You And I Together But When I Look Ahead Up The White Road There Is Always Another One Walking Beside You Gliding Wrapt In A Brown Mantle, Hooded I Do Not Know Whether A Man Or A Woman -but Who Is That On The Other Side Of You?

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

Survival Is Your Strength Not Your Shame.

It Is Only In The World Of Objects That We Have Time And Space And Selves.

If You Start With A Bang, You Won't End With A Whimper.

We Had The Experience But Missed The Meaning. And Approach To The Meaning Restores The Experience In A Different Form.

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

Weave, Weave The Sunlight In Your Hair-

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

The Good Poet Welds His Theft Into A Whole Of Feeling Which Is Unique, Utterly Different From That From Which It Was Torn; The Bad Poet Throws It Into Something Which Has No Cohesion.

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.

Amongst The Rock One Cannot Stop Or Think

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.

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

There Will Be Time, There Will Be Time To Prepare A Face To Meet The Faces That You Meet.

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

People To Whom Nothing Has Ever Happened Cannot Understand The Unimportance Of Events.

Except For The Point, The Still Point, There Would Be No Dance, And There Is Only The Dance

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

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

Disillusionment

Time For You And Time For Me, And Time Yet For A Hundred Indecisions, And For A Hundred Visions And Revisions, Before The Taking Of A Toast And Tea.

To Arrive Where You Are, To Get From Where You Are Not, You Must Go By A Way Wherein There Is No Ecstasy. In Order To Arrive At What You Do Not Know You Must Go By A Way Which Is The Way Of Ignorance. In Order To Possess What You Do Not Possess You Must Go By The Way Of Dispossession. In Order To Arrive At What You Are Not You Must Go Through The Way In Which You Are Not. And What You Do Not Know Is The Only Thing You Know And What You Own Is What You Do Not Own And Where You Are Is Where You Are Not.

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.

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.

No Poet, No Artist Of Any Art, Has His Complete Meaning Alone.

Individual Talent

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

A Crowd Flowed Over London Bridge, So Many, I Had Not Thought Death Had Undone So Many.

Anxiety Is The Hand Maiden Of Creativity.

For I Have Known Them All Already, Known Them All— Have Known The Evenings, Mornings, Afternoons, I Have Measured Out My Life With Coffee Spoons.

I Do Not Know Much About Gods; But I Think That The River Is A Strong Brown God-sullen, Untamed And Intractable, Patient To Some Degree, At First Recognized As A Frontier; Useful, Untrustworthy, As A Conveyor Of Commerce; Then Only A Problem Confronting The Builder Of Bridges. The Problem Once Solved, The Brown God Is Almost Forgotten By The Dwellers In Cities-ever, However, Implacable. Keeping His Seasons, And Rages, Destroyer, Reminder Of What Men Choose To Forget. Unhonored, Unpropitiated By Worshippers Of The Machine, But Waiting, Watching And Waiting.

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

It Is In Fact A Part Of The Function Of Education To Help Us Escape, Not From Our Own Time - For We Are Bound By That - But From The Intellectual And Emotional Limitations Of Our Time.

The Hint Half Guessed, The Gift Half Understood, Is Incarnation. Here The Impossible Union Of Spheres Of Existence Is Actual. Here The Past And Future Are Conquered And Reconciled.

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!!

We Must Learn To Suffer More.

We Shall Not Cease From Exploration

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

Bad Poets Imitate, Good Poets Steal.

No Scheme For A Change Of Society Can Be Made To Appear Immediately Palatable, Except By Falsehood, Until Society Has Become So Desperate That It Will Accept Any Change.

Every End Is A Beginning...and Every Beginning Is An End.

Shape Without Form, Shade Without Color, Paralyzed Force, Gesture Without Motion; Those Who Have Crossed With Direct Eyes, To Death's Other Kingdom Remember Us-if At All-not As Lost Violent Souls, But Only As The Hollow Men The Stuffed Men.

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 An Assertion Of Truth, But The Making Of That Truth More Fully Real To Us.

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

What We Call The Beginning Is Often The End. And To Make An End Is To Make A Beginning. The End Is Where We Start From.

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.

Distracted From Distraction By Distraction

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.

But It Seems That Something Has Happened That Has Never Happened Before: Though We Know Not Just When, Or Why, Or How, Or Where.

Do I Dare Disturb The Universe?

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.

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

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

Poetry Is A Mug's Game.

I Am Aware Of The Damp Souls Of Housemaids Sprouting Despondently At Area Gates.

We Must Always Take Risks. That Is Our Destiny.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

And The Lost Heart Stiffens And Rejoices In The Lost Lilac And The Lost Sea Voices And The Weak Spirit Quickens To Rebel For The Bent Golden-rod And The Lost Sea Smell Quickens To Recover.

The Poet's Mind Is In Fact A Receptacle For Seizing And Storing Up Numberless Feelings, Phrases, Images, Which Remain There Until All The Particles Which Can Unite To Form A New Compound Are Present Together.

Our Emotions Are Only “incidents” In The Effort To Keep Day And Night Together.

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.

For He Will Do As He Do Do And There's No Doing Anything About It!

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.

The Immature Poet Imitates, The Mature Poet Plagiarizes.

I Would Meet You Upon This Honestly. I That Was Near Your Heart Was Removed Therefrom To Lose Beauty In Terror, Terror In Inquisition. I Have Lost My Passion: Why Should I Need To Keep It Since What Is Kept Must Be Adulterated? I Have Lost My Sight, Smell, Hearing, Taste And Touch: How Should I Use Them For Your Closer Contact?

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

Winter Kept Us Warm, Covering Earth In Forgetful Snow

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

Can We Only Love Something Created In Our Own Imaginations?

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!

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 Pekes And The Pollicles, Everyone Knows, Are Proud And Implacable, Passionate Foes; It Is Always The Same, Wherever One Goes. And The Pugs And The Poms, Although Most People Say That They Do Not Like Fighting, Will Often Display Every Symptom Of Wanting To Join In The Fray. And They Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark Until You Can Hear Them All Over The Park.

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.

Men Tighten The Knot Of Confusion Into Perfect Misunderstanding.

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

War Among Men Defiles This World.

The Dove Descending Breaks The Air With Flame Of Incandescent Terror Of Which The Tongues Declare The One Discharge From Sin And Error. The Only Hope, Or Else Despair Lies In The Choice Of Pyre Or Pyre- To Be Redeemed From Fire By Fire. Who Then Devised The Torment? Love. Love Is The Unfamiliar Name Behind The Hands That Wove The Intolerable Shirt Of Flame Which Human Power Cannot Remove. We Only Live, Only Suspire Consumed By Either Fire Or Fire.

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

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

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

In Life There Is Not Time To Grieve Long.

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.

The Last Thing One Discovers In Composing A Work Is What To Put First.

If You Haven’t The Strength To Impose Your Own Terms Upon Life, Then You Must Accept The Terms It Offers You.

It Has Frequently Been Said That We Never Desire What We Think Absolutely Inapprehensible: It Is However True That Some Of Our Sharpest Agonies Are Those In Which The Object Of Desire Is Regarded As Both Possible And Imaginary.

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

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

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

Intense Moments

Before And After

That Meddling In Other People's Affairs...formerly Conducted By The Most Discreet Intrigue Is Now Openly Advocated Under The Name Of Intervention.

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

The Wounded Surgeon Plies The Steel That Questions The Distempered Part; Beneath The Bleeding Hands We Feel The Sharp Compassion Of The Healer's Art Resolving The Enigma Of The Fever Chart.

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.

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

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.

There Is One Who Remembers The Way To Your Door: Life You May Evade, But Death You Shall 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.

The Ordinary Man's Experience Is Chaotic, Irregular, Fragmentary. [he] Falls In Love Or Reads Spinoza, And These Two Experiences Have Nothing To Do With Each Other, Or With The Noise Of The Typewriter, Or The Smell Of Cooking; In The Mind Of The Poet These Experiences Are Always Forming New Wholes

Falling In Love

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

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.

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

In The Mountains, There You Feel Free.

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Walter Isaacson

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