T. S. Eliot
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.Collection: Mind
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.Collection: Death
That meddling in other people's affairs...formerly conducted by the most discreet intrigue is now openly advocated under the name of intervention.Collection: Peace
Sensibility alters from generation to generation in everybody, whether we will or no; but expression is only altered by a man of genius.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Country
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.Collection: Greatness
The work of creation is never without travail.Collection: Creation
People find a way in which they can say something.Collection: People
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.Collection: Lying
I believe the moment of birth Is when we have knowledge of death I believe the season of birth Is the season of sacrifice.Collection: Believe
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.Collection: Art
When comparing works of art, it is important that the art itself, and not the artists, be considered.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Memories
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, ... .Collection: Attachment
Birth, and copulation, and death; that's all the facts when you come to brass tacks.Collection: Life
Thus with most careful devotion Thus with precise attention To detail, interfering preparation Of that which is already prepared Men lighten the knot of confusion Into perfect misunderstanding, Reflecting a pocket-torch of observation.Collection: Men
I can connect Nothing with nothingCollection: Wasteland
The Pekes and the Pollicles, everyone knows, Are proud and implacable, passionate foes; It is always the same, wherever one goes. And the Pugs and the Poms, although most people say that they do not like fighting, will often display Every symptom of wanting to join in the fray. And they Bark bark bark bark bark bark Until you can hear them all over the park.Collection: Fighting
We ask only to be reassured About the noises in the cellar And the window that should not have been openCollection: Noise
I should have been a pair of ragged claws/ Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.Collection: Should Have
I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.Collection: Age
I say to you: Make perfect your will. / I say: take no thought of the harvest, / But only of proper sowing.Collection: Perfect
Now that the lilacs are in bloom She has a bowl of lilacs in her roomCollection: Rooms
The difference between being an elder statesman And posing successfully as an elder statesman Is practically negligible.Collection: Differences
Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity, there never was a cat of such deceitfulness and sauvity.Collection: Cat
the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. [He] falls in love or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter, or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholesCollection: Art
The journey, Not the destination matters...Collection: Destination
Unreal friendship may turn to real But real friendship, once ended, cannot be mended.Collection: Real
Someone 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.Collection: Book
It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the ‘dear deceit’ of beauty.Collection: Firsts
We learn what poetry is – if we ever learn – by reading it.Collection: Reading