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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.

-T. S. Eliot

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We Shall Not Cease

T. S. Eliot

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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.

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The Tiger Springs In The New Year. Us He Devours.

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

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.

Men Dislike Being Awakened From Their Death In Life.

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.

We Must Learn To Suffer More.

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.

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

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.

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!

After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness?

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?

The Past And Future / Are Conquered, And Reconciled.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

With A Poem You Can Say 'i Got My Feeling Into Words For Myself. I Now Have The Equivalent In Words For That Much Of What I Have Felt.'

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.

Someone Said, 'the Dead Writers Are Remote From Us Because We Know So Much More Than They Did.' Precisely, And They Are That Which We Know.

The Eastern Light Our Spires Touch At Morning, The Light That Slants Upon Our Western Doors At Evening, The Twilight Over Stagnant Pools At Batflight, Moon Light And Star Light, Owl And Moth Light, Glow-worm Glowlight On A Grassblade. O Light Invisible, We Worship Thee!

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.

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

In The End Is My Beginning.

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.

Between The Vision And The Act Lies The Shadow.

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.

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

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

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.

The Business Of The Poet Is Not To Find New Emotions, But To Use The Ordinary Ones And, In Working Them Up Into Poetry, To Express Feelings Which Are Not In Actual Emotions At All.

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

The Soul Of Man Must Quicken To Creation.

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

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

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

The Circle Of Our Understanding Is A Very Restricted Area.

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

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

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.

We Must Always Take Risks. That Is Our Destiny.

At The Still Point, There The Dance Is.

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

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Only Through Time Time Is Conquered

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

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

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

When A Cat Adopts You, And I Am Not Superstitious At All I Don't Mean Only Black Cats There Is Nothing To Be Done About It Except To Put Up With It And Wait Until The Wind Changes.

Love Compels Cruelty To Those Who Do Not Understand Love.

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

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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.

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.

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.

Genuine Poetry Can Communicate Before It Is Understood.

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

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

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

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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

For You Know Only A Heap Of Broken Images

Amongst The Rock One Cannot Stop Or Think

All Cases Are Unique And Very Similar To Others.

Oh, Do Not Ask, 'what Is It?'/let Us Go And Make Our Visit.

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

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

We Should Not Confuse Information With Knowledge.

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 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.

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The Young Feel Tired At The End Of An Action, The Old At The Beginning.

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.

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

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

April Is The Cruellest Month.

The Darkness Declares The Glory Of Light.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Business Today Consists In Persuading Crowds.

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

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

Poetry Is Not A Turning Loose Of Emotion, But An Escape From Emotion; It Is Not The Expression Of Personality, But An Escape From Personality. But, Of Course, Only Those Who Have Personality And Emotions Know What It Means To Want To Escape From These Things.

Music Heard So Deeply That It Is Not Heard At All, But You Are The Music While The Music Lasts.

Sometimes Things Become Possible If We Want Them Bad Enough.

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.

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

Words Strain, Crack And Sometimes Break, Under The Burden, Under The Tension, Slip, Slide, Perish, Decay With Imprecision, Will Not Stay In Place, Will Not Stay Still.

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

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.

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

If One Has To Earn A Living, Therefore, The Safest Occupation Is That Most Remote From The Arts.

I Am Tired With My Own Life And The Lives Of Those After Me, I Am Dying In My Own Death And The Deaths Of Those After Me.

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

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

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.

Humankind Cannot Bear Very Much Reality.

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

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

War Among Men Defiles This World.

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

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

Justice Itself Tends To Be Corrupted By Political Passion.

We Had The Experience, But We Missed The Meaning.

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

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

The Work Of Creation Is Never Without Travail.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

My Greatest Trouble Is Getting The Curtain Up And Down.

Distracted From Distraction By Distraction

Only By Acceptance Of The Past, Can You Alter It

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!!

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

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

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.

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

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

Bad Poets Imitate, Good Poets Steal.

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.

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

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

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

These Fragments I Have Shored Against My Ruins

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

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

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

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

I Have A Gumbie Cat In Mind, Her Name Is Jennyanydots;her Coat Is One Of The Tabby Kind,with Tiger Stripes And Lepard Spots.

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

There Will Be Time To Murder And Create.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

The End Is In The Beginning.

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

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

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

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

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

The Single Rose Is Now The Garden Where All Loves End

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

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.

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

Humor Is Also A Way Of Saying Something Serious.

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

Old Men Ought To Be Explorers.

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

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.

To Make An End Is To Make A Beginning.

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

It's Strange That Words Are So Inadequate. Yet, Like The Asthmatic Struggling For Breath, So The Lover Must Struggle For Words.

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

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.

Where There Is No Temple There Shall Be No Homes.

Life Is Long Between The Desire And The Spasm.

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