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T. S. Eliot Quotes - Page 16

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 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.

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.

Home, Doors, Want

T.S. Eliot (2011). “The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot”, p.195, Faber & Faber

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.

Cities, Rivers, House

T.S. Eliot (2011). “The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot”, p.129, Faber & Faber

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.

Evil, Wickedness, Way

T.S. Eliot (2016). “The Letters of T. S. Eliot Volume 6: 1932–1933”, p.225, Faber & Faber

You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; They called me the hyacinth girl.' —Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence. Od' und leer das Meer.

Girl, Heart, Eye

T.S. Eliot “My Own Wasteland”, Lisa Lee

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.'

Funny, Mom, Mother

I think we are in rats’ alley Where the dead men lost their bones.

Men, Thinking, Rats

Waste Land (1922) pt. 2

The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious.

Poetry, Crafts, Conscious

T.S. Eliot (2010). “The Waste Land and Other Poems”, p.92, Broadview Press

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

Art, Writing, Reading Poetry

The Sacred Wood "Philip Massinger" (1920)

And all shall be well and/ All manner of thing shall be well/ By the purification of the motive/ In the ground of our beseeching

Purification, Motive, Quartets

T. S. Eliot (2014). “Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950”, p.152, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

There is no absolute point of view from which real and ideal can be finally separated and labelled.

Real, Views, Point Of View

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? -

Sunset, Skirts, Trails

T. S. Eliot (2012). “The Waste Land, Prufrock and Other Poems”, p.10, Courier Corporation

Because I know that time is always time And place is always and only place.

Knows

T.S. Eliot (2011). “The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot”, p.78, Faber & Faber

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.

Time, Hair, Wonder

T.S. Eliot (2015). “The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I: Collected and Uncollected Poems”, p.6, Faber & Faber

That was my way of putting it-not very satisfactory: A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion, Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle With words and meanings.

Fashion, Leaving, Way

Four Quartets "East Coker" pt. 2 (1940)

The immature poet imitates, the mature poet plagiarizes.

Immature, Mature, Poet

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.

Fall, Heart, Singing

"Sweeney Among the Nightingales" l. 35 (1919)

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.

Two, Doubt, Progress

Prufrock (1917) "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

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.

Ambition, Men, Deception

T. S. Eliot (2014). “Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950”, p.208, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet--and here's no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.

Greatness, Ice, Cake

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

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 . . .

Home, Intense Moments, Burning

Four Quartets "East Coker" pt. 5 (1940)

Here were decent godless people; Their only monument the asphalt road And a thousand lost golf balls.

Golf, People, Balls

"Choruses from the Rock" pt. 3 (1934)

Each way means loneliness -- and communion.

Loneliness, Mean, Way

T.S. Eliot (2011). “The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot”, p.405, Faber & Faber

The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula for that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.

Art, Facts, Events

The Sacred Wood "Hamlet and His Problems" (1920).

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.

Life, Love Is, Desire

T.S. Eliot (2009). “Collected Poems 1909-1962”, p.161, Faber & Faber

Business today consists in persuading crowds.

Business, Crowds, Today

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