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T. S. Eliot Quotes - Page 13

All Quotes Adventure Age Aging Ambition Appreciation Art Atheism Attitude Awareness Birth Children Choices Christianity Church Coffee Communication Confusion Country Creation Criticism Culture Dance Dancing Darkness Death Desire Destiny Discipline Dying Evil Experience Faith Fear Feelings Fighting Food Funny Genius Giving Graduation Greatness Heart History Home Hope House Humanity Humility Ignorance Imagination Inspiration Inspirational Inspiring Journey Judging Justice Knowledge Labor Language Laughter Life Literature Loneliness Love Lying Meditation Memories Morning Motivational Mountain Music New Beginnings Pain Passion Past Peace Personality Philosophy Poetry Progress Purpose Rain Reading Reality Religion Risk Running Silence Simplicity Singing Soul Spring Struggle Success Suffering Talent Tea Time Tradition Understanding Vision Waiting War Winter Work Writing

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.

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.

Feelings, Ordinary, Use

T.S. Eliot (2015). “The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I: Collected and Uncollected Poems”, p.953, Faber & Faber

I've been born, and once is enough.

Enough, Born

Sweeney Agonistes (1932) p. 24

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.

Mind, Experience, Poet

1921 Selected Essays (1932),'The Metaphysical Poets'.

The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

Art, Sacrifice, Self

The Sacred Wood "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1920)

Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself.

Mean, Paradox, Absolutes

"Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F.H. Bradley". Doctoral dissertation in philosophy; submitted to Harvard, Chapter 7, 1964.

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.

Names, Faces, Firsts

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.

Greatness, Snickers, Coats

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" l. 84 (1917)

I believe the moment of birth Is when we have knowledge of death I believe the season of birth Is the season of sacrifice.

Believe, Sacrifice, Birth

T. S. Eliot (2014). “The Family Reunion”, p.56, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Sensibility alters from generation to generation in everybody, whether we will or no; but expression is only altered by a man of genius.

Men, Expression, Generations

That meddling in other people's affairs...formerly conducted by the most discreet intrigue is now openly advocated under the name of intervention.

Peace, War, Names

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.

Country, Children, People

The work of creation is never without travail.

Creation

T. S. Eliot (2014). “The Rock: A Pageant Play”, p.77, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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.

Death, Running, Laughter

People find a way in which they can say something.

People, Way

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.

Lying, Love Is, Fire

Four Quartets "Little Gidding" pt. 4 (1942)

When comparing works of art, it is important that the art itself, and not the artists, be considered.

Art, Important, Compare

As a rule, with me an unfinished [idea] is a thing that might as well be rubbed out. It's better, if there's something good in it that I might make use of elsewhere, to leave it at the back of my mind than on paper in a drawer. If I leave it in a drawer it remains the same thing but if it's in the memory it becomes transformed into something else.

Memories, Ideas, Mind

I take as metaphysical poetry that in which what is ordinarily apprehensible only by thought is brought within the grasp of feeling, or that in which what is ordinarily only felt is transformed into thought without ceasing to be feeling.

Art, Poetry, Feelings

T. S. Eliot (2014). “The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry”, p.220, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

When we read of human beings behaving in certain ways, with the approval of the author, who gives his benediction to this behavior by his attitude towards the result of the behavior arranged by himself, we can be influenced towards behaving in the same way.

Attitude, Creativity, Giving

T.S. Eliot (1950). “Selected Essays”

There are three conditions which often look alike Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow: Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference, ... .

Attachment, Self, Three

T.S. Eliot (2009). “Collected Poems 1909-1962”, p.180, Faber & Faber

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.

Believe, Exposed, Humans

T. S. Eliot (2014). “Selected Essays”, p.120, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Art never improves, but... the material of art is never quite the same.

Art, Art Is, Materials

T. S. Eliot (1998). “The Sacred Wood and Major Early Essays”, p.29, Courier Corporation

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion.

Poetry, Personality, Individual Talent

The Sacred Wood "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1920)

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.

Mother, Interesting, Want

Birth, and copulation, and death; that's all the facts when you come to brass tacks.

Life, Death, Dying

Sweeney Agonistes (1932)

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