Background Image

...

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.

-T. S. Eliot

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

We Must Believe That

T. S. Eliot

...

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.

Views: 68700

Topic

More From T. S. Eliot

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

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

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

A Toothache, Or A Violent Passion, Is Not Necessarily Diminished By Our Knowledge Of Its Causes, Its Character, Its Importance Or Insignificance.

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

There Is No Method But To Be Very Intelligent.

If We All Were Judged According To The Consequences Of All Our Words And Deeds, Beyond The Intention And Beyond Our Limited Understanding Of Ourselves And Others, We Should All Be Condemned.

A Tradition Without Intelligence Is Not Worth Having.

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!!

Genuine Poetry Can Communicate Before It Is Understood.

…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.

A National Culture, If It Is To Flourish, Should Be A Constellation Of Cultures, The Constitutes Of Which, Benefiting Each Other, Benefit The Whole.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Old Men Ought To Be Explorers.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

People Find A Way In Which They Can Say Something.

Humankind Can't Stand Too Much Reality.

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.

Not Fare Well, But Fare Forward

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.

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.

Light Light The Visible Reminder Of Invisible Light.

We Shall Not Cease From Exploration

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.'

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.

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.

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

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.

War Among Men Defiles This World.

Maturing As A Poet Means Maturing As The Whole Man, Experiencing New Emotions Appropriate To One's Age, And With The Same Intensity As The Emotions Of Youth.

To Arrive Where You Are, To Get From Where You Are Not / You Must Go By A Way Wherein There Is No Ecstasy.

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

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 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 Life There Is Not Time To Grieve Long.

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

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.

A Good Poet Will Usually Borrow From Authors Remote In Time, Or Alien In Language, Or Diverse In Interest.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

The Soul Of Man Must Quicken To Creation.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

No Artist Produces Great Art By A Deliberate Attempt To Express His Own Personality.

The Journey, Not The Destination Matters.

Taking The Question In General, I Should Say, In The Case Of Many Poets, That The Most Important Thing For Them To Do ... Is To Write As Little As Possible

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

There Will Be Time To Murder And Create.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

All Art Emulates The Condition Of Ritual. That Is What It Comes From And To That It Must Always Return For Nourishment.

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

To Make An End Is To Make A Beginning.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

...the Still Point In A Turning World.

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.

The Rum Turn Tugger Is A Terrible Bore: When You Let Him In, Then He Wants To Be Out; He's Always On The Wrong Side Of Every Door, And As Soon As He's At Home, Then He'd Like To Get About.

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.

I Gotta Use Words To Talk To You.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Where Does One Go From A World Of Insanity? Somewhere On The Other Side Of Despair.

There Is No Absolute Point Of View From Which Real And Ideal Can Be Finally Separated And Labelled.

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.

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?

Hurry Up, Please, Its Time.

Humor Is Also A Way Of Saying Something Serious.

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?

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

Where Is All The Knowledge We Lost With Information?

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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.

Let's Not Be Narrow, Nasty, And Negative.

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.

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

The Hint Half Guessed, The Gift Half Understood, Is Incarnation.

All Time Is Eternal, Moving Inexorably Toward An End Which We Believe Is A Result Of Our Actions, But Over Which Our Control Is Mere Illusion.

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.

The More Perfect The Artist, The More Completely Separate In Him Will Be The Man Who Suffers And The Mind Which Creates.

These Fragments I Have Shored Against My Ruins

We Had The Experience, But We Missed The Meaning.

At The Still Point, There The Dance Is.

Past Art Is Subject To Change.

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

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.

Where Is The Knowledge We Have Lost In Information?

Too Much Information

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.

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

Gin And Drugs, Dear Lady, Gin And Drugs.

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

It Is Impossible To Say Just What I Mean!

Men Tighten The Knot Of Confusion Into Perfect Misunderstanding.

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

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

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

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

I Am An Anglo-catholic In Religion, A Classicist In Literature And A Royalist In Politics.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

The Work Of Creation Is Never Without Travail.

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

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

Intense Moments

Before And After

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Men Dislike Being Awakened From Their Death In Life.

Between The Vision And The Act Lies The Shadow.

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

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

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.

We Should Not Confuse Information With Knowledge.

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

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

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

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

Business Today Consists In Persuading Crowds.

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.

If All Time Is Eternally Present, All Time Is Unredeemable

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

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

Liberty Is A Different Kind Of Pain From Prison.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Fading, Fading: Strength Beyond Hope And Despair Climbing The Third Stair. Lord, I Am Not Worthy Lord, I Am Not Worthy But Speak The Word Only.

The Purpose Of Literature Is To Turn Blood Into Ink.

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.

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

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

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.

In A World Of Fugitives The One Who Stays Home Will Seem To Be Running Away

There Is Not A More Repulsive Spectacle Than On Old Man Who Will Not Forsake The World, Which Has Already Forsaken Him.

He Is Haunted By A Demon, A Demon Against Which He Feels Powerless, Because In Its First Manifestation It Has No Face, No Name, Nothing; And The Words, The Poem He Makes, Are A Kind Of Exorcism Of This Demon.

Composing On The Typewriter, I Find That I Am Sloughing Off All My Long Sentences Which I Used To Dote Upon. Short, Staccato, Like Modern French Prose. The Typewriter Makes For Lucidity, But I Am Not Sure That It Encourages Subtlety.

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

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.

Were Meant To Be

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.

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

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.

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

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

Trending Author

Category