T. S. Eliot

"Some one 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."

"What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality."

"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."

"The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. Both errors tend to make him "personal." 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."

"One thinks of all the hands That are raising dingy shades In a thousand furnished rooms."

"I am moved by fancies that are curled Around these images, and cling: The notion of some infinitely gentle Infinitely suffering thing."

"And I must borrow every changing shape To find expression."

"Stand on the highest pavement of the stair— Lean on a garden urn— Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair."

"Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand."

"Sometimes these cogitations still amaze The troubled midnight and the noon’s repose."

"Twelve o'clock. Along the reaches of the street Held in lunar synthesis, Whispering lunar incantations Dissolve the floors of memory And all its clear relations, Its divisions and precisions."

"I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids Sprouting despondently at area gates."

"The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn."

"Upon the glazen shelves kept watch Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith, The army of unalterable law."

"His laughter tinkled among the teacups."

"He laughed like an irresponsible fœtus."

"Here I am, an old man in a dry month, Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain."

"Signs are taken for wonders. "We would see a sign!" The word within a word, unable to speak a word, Swaddled with darkness."

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

"After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions, Guides us by vanities. Think now She gives when our attention is distracted And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late What's not believed in, or if still believed, In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon Into weak hands, what's thought can be dispensed with Till the refusal propagates a fear. 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."

"The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. Think at last We have not reached conclusion, when I Stiffen in a rented house. Think at last I have not made this show purposelessly And it is not by any concitation Of the backward devils. I would meet you upon this honestly. I that was near your heart was removed therefrom To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition. I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it Since what is kept must be adulterated?"

"so the countess passed on until she came through the little park, where Niobe presented her with a cabinet, and so departed."

"The broad-backed hippopotamus Rests on his belly in the mud; Although he seems so firm to us He is merely flesh and blood."

"Webster was much possessed by death And saw the skull beneath the skin"

"Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye is underlined for emphasis; Uncorseted, her friendly bust Gives promise of pneumatic bliss."

"Where are the eagles and the trumpets? Buried beneath some snow-deep Alps. Over buttered scones and crumpets Weeping, weeping multitudes Droop in a hundred A.B.C.'s"

"April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain."

"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 was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence."

"Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, The lady of situations."

"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."

"O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag— It's so elegant So intelligent"

"O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you."

"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"

"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"

"In this decayed hole among the mountainsIn the faint moonlight, the grass is singingOver the tumbled graves, about the chapelThere is the empty chapel, only the wind's home."

"Then spoke the thunder DA Datta: 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."

"I have heard the key Turn in the door once and turn once only We think of the key, each in his prison Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison."

"These fragments I have shored against my ruins Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe. Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Shantih shantih shantih"

"Mistah Kurtz — he dead"

"A penny for the Old Guy"

"We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar."

"Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion."

"Atheism should always be encouraged (i.e. rationalistic not emotional atheism) for the sake of the Faith."

"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."

"Wo ist die Weisheit, die wir im Wissen verloren haben? Wo ist das Wissen, das wir in der Information verloren haben?"