T.S. Eliot: Trending quotes

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T.S. Eliot: 540 quotes53 likes

“Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom´
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.”

T.S. Eliot book The Hollow Men

The Hollow Men (1925)

“These modern productions are all very well,
But there's nothing to equal, from what I hear tell,
That moment of mystery
When I made history
As Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.”

T.S. Eliot book Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

Gus: The Theatre Cat
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939)

“It is not the "greatness," the intensity, of the emotions, the components, but the intensity of the artistic process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place, that counts.”

T.S. Eliot book Tradition and the Individual Talent

Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)

“Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us”

T.S. Eliot

Ash-Wednesday (1930)

“Unreal city,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land (1922), Line 60 et seq.

This is a reference to Dante's Inferno, Canto III, lines 55-57

“Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen.”

T.S. Eliot

Ash-Wednesday (1930)

“When the day's hustle and bustle is done,
Then the Gumbie Cat's work is but hardly begun.”

T.S. Eliot book Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

The Old Gumbie Cat
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939)

“The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do more, and you are not yet decrepit enough to turn them down.”

T.S. Eliot

Time (23 October 1950)

“I have given you the power of choice, and you only alternate
Between futile speculation and unconsidered action.”

T.S. Eliot

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

“Much to cast down, much to build, much to restore.”

T.S. Eliot

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

“And the wind shall say: "Here were decent godless people:
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls."”

T.S. Eliot

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

“Weave the wind. I have no ghosts,
An old man in a draughty house
Under a windy knob.”

T.S. Eliot book Poems

"Gerontion"
Poems (1920)

“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.”

T.S. Eliot

“What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land (1922), Line 367 et seq.

“Then it seemed as if men must proceed from light to light, in the light of the Word,
Through the Passion and Sacrifice saved in spite of their negative being;
Bestial as always before, carnal, self seeking as always before, selfish and purblind as ever before,
Yet always struggling, always reaffirming, always resuming their march on the way that was lit by the light;
Often halting, loitering, straying, delaying, returning, yet following no other way.”

T.S. Eliot

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

“No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job…. Poetry.. remains one person talking to another…. no poet can write a poem of amplitude unless he is the master of the prosaic.”

T.S. Eliot

The Music of Poetry (24 February 1942) the third W. P. Ker memorial lecture delivered in the University of Glasgow

“Let me show you the work of the humble. Listen.”

T.S. Eliot

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

“He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:
At whatever time the deed took place-
Macavity wasn't there.”

T.S. Eliot book Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

Macavity: The Mystery Cat
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939)

“It is a test (a positive test, I do not assert that it is always valid negatively), that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”

T.S. Eliot

Dante (1929), a biographical essay