T. S. Eliot Quotes

Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important.

"Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer were a very notorious couple of cats.
As knockabout clowns, quick-change comedians,
Tight-rope walkers and acrobats
They had an extensive reputation.
[...]
When the family assembled for Sunday dinner,
With their minds made up that they wouldn’t get thinner
On Argentine joint, potatoes and greens,
And the cook would appear from behind the scenes
And say in a voice that was broken with sorrow
"I'm afraid you must wait and have dinner tomorrow!
For the joint has gone from the oven like that!"
Then the family would say: "It's that horrible cat!
It was Mungojerrie – or Rumpleteazer!" -
And most of the time they left it at that.

Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer had a wonderful way of working together.
And some of the time you would say it was luck
And some of the time you would say it was weather.
They would go through the house like a hurricane,
And no sober person could take his oath
Was it Mungojerrie – or Rumpleteazer?
Or could you have sworn that it mightn't be both?

And when you heard a dining room smash
Or up from the pantry there came a loud crash
Or down from the library came a loud ping
From a vase which was commonly said to be Ming
Then the family would say: "Now which was which cat?
It was Mungojerrie! And Rumpleteazer!"
And there's nothing at all to be done about that!"

You will have to live with those memories and make them into something new. Only by acceptance of the past will you alter its meaning.

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

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 emotion know what it means to want to escape from these.

A dangerous person to disagree with.

Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence … 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.

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.

They constantly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.
But the man that is will shadow
The man that pretends to be.

What is this self inside us, this silent observer,
Severe and speechless critic, who can terrorize us
And urge us to futile activity,
And in the end, Judge us still more severely,
For the errors into which his own reproaches drove us?

What day is the day that we know that we hope for or fear for? Every day is the day we should fear from or hope from. One moment Weighs like another. Only in retrospection, selection, We say, that was the day. The critical moment That is always now, and here.

Datta, dayadhvam, damyata
(Give, sympathize, control)

That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
'Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?

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

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.