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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 . . .

-T. S. Eliot

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Home Is Where One

T. S. Eliot

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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 . . .

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Intense Moments

More From T. S. Eliot

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.

Genuine Blasphemy, Genuine In Spirit And Not Purely Verbal, Is The Product Of Partial Belief, And Is As Impossible To The Complete Atheist As To The Perfect Christian.

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.

Sand. Everywhere. In The Bed, In The Shower, All Over The Floor. Grrrrr.

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

Cocktail Parties

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.

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

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

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.

Those Who Arrive At The End Of The Journey Are Not Those Who Began.

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.

In The Life Of One Man, Never The Same Time Returns.

At The Violet Hour, When The Eyes And Back Turn Upward From The Desk, When The Human Engine Waits Like A Taxi Throbbing Waiting I Tiresias, Though Blind, Throbbing Between Two Lives.

The Role Of Art Is Not To Express The Personality But To Overcome It.

You Are The Music While The Music Lasts.

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

We Are The Hollow Men We Are The Stuffed Men Leaning Together...

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.

In The End Is My Beginning.

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.

For You Know Only A Heap Of Broken Images

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

The Immature Poet Imitates, The Mature Poet Plagiarizes.

So The Lover Must Struggle For Words.

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.

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.

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.

Philosophy: A Purple Bullfinch In A Lilac Tree.

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

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

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

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.

We Die To Each Other Daily. What We Know Of Other People Is Only Our Memory Of The Moments During Which We Knew Them. And They Have Changed Since Then. To Pretend That They And We Are The Same Is A Useful And Convenient Social Convention Which Must Sometimes Be Broken. We Must Also Remember That At Every Meeting We Are Meeting A Stranger.

I Read, Much Of The Night, And Go South In The Winter.

Old Men Ought To Be Explorers.

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

The Nobel Is A Ticket To One's Own Funeral. No One Has Ever Done Anything After He Got It.

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

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.

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

Do I Dare Disturb The Universe?

Cling, Swing, Spring, Sing, Swing Up Into The Apple Tree.

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

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

Sister, Mother And Spirit Of The River, Spirit Of The Sea, Suffer Me Not To Be Separated And Let My Cry Come Unto Thee.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Desire Itself Is Movement Not In Itself Desirable; Love Is Itself Unmoving, Only The Cause And End Of Movement, Timeless, And Undesiring Except In The Aspect Of Time Caught In The Form Of Limitation Between Un-being And Being.

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

The Circle Of Our Understanding Is A Very Restricted Area.

Nothing Pleases People More Than To Go On Thinking What They Have Always Thought, And At The Same Time Imagine That They Are Thinking Something New And Daring: It Combines The Advantage Of Security And The Delight Of Adventure.

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?

Culture Is The One Thing That We Cannot Deliberately Aim At. It Is The Product Of A Variety Of More Or Less Harmonious Activities, Each Pursued For Its Own Sake.

But What Have I, But What Have I, My Friend, To Give You, What Can You Receive From Me? Only The Friendship And The Sympathy Of One About To Reach Her Journey's End.

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

This Is The Way The World Ends, Not With A Bang, But A Whimper.

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.

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.

One Starts An Action Simply Because One Must Do Something.

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

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

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 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.

I Gotta Use Words To Talk To You.

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

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

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

Unreal Friendship May Turn To Real But Real Friendship, Once Ended, Cannot Be Mended

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.

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

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

Art Is The Escape From Personality.

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.

Gin And Drugs, Dear Lady, Gin And Drugs.

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

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.

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

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

Mediocre Writers Borrow; Great Writers Steal.

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.

From A Purely External Point Of View There Is No Will; And To Find Will In Any Phenomenon Requires A Certain Empathy; We Observe Aman's Actions And Place Ourselves Partly But Not Wholly In His Position; Or We Act, And Place Ourselves Partly In The Position Of An Outsider.

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

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

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

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.

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.

We Had The Experience, But We Missed The Meaning.

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.

We Shall Not Cease From Exploration

My Greatest Trouble Is Getting The Curtain Up And Down.

Can We Only Love Something Created In Our Own Imaginations?

We Must Learn To Suffer More.

Life Is Long Between The Desire And The Spasm.

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

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.

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.

In Life There Is Not Time To Grieve Long.

I Can Connect Nothing With Nothing

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

The Winter Evening Settles Down With Smell Of Steaks In Passageways. Six O'clock. The Burnt-out Ends Of Smoky Days. And Now A Gusty Shower Wraps The Grimy Scraps Of Withered Leaves About Your Feet And Newspapers From Vacant Lots; The Showers Beat On Broken Blinds And Chimney-pots, And At The Corner Of The Street A Lonely Cab-horse Steams And Stamps. And Then The Lighting Of The Lamps.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Between The Conception And The Creation, Between The Emotion And The Response, Falls The Shadow.

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.

We Read Many Books, Because We Cannot Know Enough People.

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.

It Is Impossible To Say Just What I Mean!

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

Individual Talent

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

No Poet, No Artist Of Any Art, Has His Complete Meaning Alone. His Significance, His Appreciation Is The Appreciation Of His Relation To The Dead Poets And Artists. You Cannot Value Him Alone; You Must Set Him, For Contrast And Comparison, Among The Dead.

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.

Poetry Is Not An Assertion Of Truth, But The Making Of That Truth More Fully Real To Us.

Death Has A Hundred Hands And Walks By A Thousand Ways.

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

Disillusionment

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

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

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?

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

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

Every Moment Is A Fresh Beginning.

Every Phrase And Every Sentence Is An End And A Beginning, Every Poem An Epitaph.

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

Past Art Is Subject To Change.

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.

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.

If All Time Is Eternally Present, All Time Is Unredeemable

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

Individual Talent

Human Kind Cannot Bear Much Reality.

In Order To Possess What You Do Not Possess, You Must Go By The Way Of Dispossession.

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

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

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.

Birth, And Copulation, And Death; That's All The Facts When You Come To Brass Tacks.

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.

Humankind Can't Stand Too Much Reality.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

The Old Should Be Explorers, Be Curious, Risk Transgression, Explore Oldness Itself.

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

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

Friendship Should Be More Than Biting Time Can Sever.

Lost Friendship

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

When A Great Poet Has Lived, Certain Things Have Been Done Once For All, And Cannot Be Achieved Again.

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

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? -

Our Lives Are Mostly A Constant Evasion Of Ourselves, And Of Our Visible, Sensible World.

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

To Justify Christian Morality Because It Provides A Foundation Of Morality, Instead Of Showing The Necessity Of Christian Morality From The Truth Of Christianity, Is A Very Dangerous Inversion.

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.

This Is The Feeling For Syllable And Rhythm, Penetrating Far Below The Conscious Levels Of Thought And Feeling, Invigorating Every Word.

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

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

A Heap Of Broken Images, Where The Sun Beats, And The Dead Tree Gives No Shelter, The Cricket No Relief, And The Dry Stone No Sound Of Water. Only There Is Shadow Under This Red Rock, (come In Under The Shadow Of This Red Rock), And I Will Show You Something Different From Either Your Shadow At Morning Striding Behind You Or Your Shadow At Evening Rising To Meet You; I Will Show You Fear In A Handful Of Dust.

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.

At The Still Point, There The Dance Is.

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.

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.

Here I Am, An Old Man In A Dry Month, Being Read To By A Boy, Waiting For Rain.

Survival Is Your Strength Not Your Shame.

A Good Deal Of Confusion Could Be Avoided, If We Refrained From Setting Before The Group, What Can Be The Aim Only Of The Individual; And Before Society As A Whole, What Can Be The Aim Only Of The Group.

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.

Do I Dare Disturb The Universe? In A Minute There Is Time For Decisions And Revisions Which A Minute Will Reverse.

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

The Destination Cannot Be Described; / You Will Know Very Little Until You Get There; / You Will Journey Blind.

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

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.

To Make An End Is To Make A Beginning.

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

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

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

History Has Many Cunning Passages, Contrived Corridors And Issues.

The Journey, Not The Destination Matters.

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

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.

Each Way Means Loneliness -- And Communion.

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

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.

The Communication Of The Dead Is Tongued With Fire Beyond The Language Of The Living.

…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.

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.

I Said To My Soul, Be Still, And Let The Dark Come Upon You Which Shall Be The Darkness Of God. . . . So The Darkness Shall Be The Light, And The Stillness The Dancing.

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.

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