T. S. Eliot
Whatever you do, don't whimper, but take the consequences.Collection: Consequence
Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable.Collection: Time
Poets in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be difficult...The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into its meaning.Collection: Order
Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other Who think the same thoughts without need of speechCollection: Thinking
No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone.Collection: Art
The river itself has no beginning or end. In its beginning, it is not yet the river; in the end it is no longer the river. What we call the headwaters is only a selection from among the innumerable sources which flow together to compose it. At what point in its course does the Mississippi become what the Mississippi means?Collection: Mean
Time present and time past / are both perhaps present in time future.Collection: Past
What profession is more trying than that of author? After you finish a piece of work it only seems good to you for a few weeks; or if it seems good at all you are convinced that it is the last you will be able to write; and if it seems bad you wonder whether everything you have done isn’t poor stuff really; and it is one kind of agony while you are writing, and another kind when you aren’t.Collection: Writing
Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the skyCollection: Sky
Hurry up, please, its time.Collection: Time
I hate university towns and university people, who are the same everywhere, with pregnant wives, sprawling children, many books and hideous pictures on the walls ... Oxford is very pretty, but I don't like to be dead.Collection: Children
Shape without form, shade without color, Paralyzed force, gesture without motion; Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember us-if at all-not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.Collection: Eye
His laughter tinkled among the teacups.Collection: Laughter
The dream crossed twilight between birth and dying.Collection: Life
Ash on an old man's sleeve / Is all the ash the burnt roses leave, / Dust in the air suspended / Marks the place where a story ended.Collection: Men
Uncorseted, her friendly bust Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.Collection: Giving
A woman drew her long black hair out tight, And fiddled whisper music on those strings, And bats with baby faces in the violet light Whistled, and beat their wings, And crawled head downward down a blackened wall.Collection: Baby
I do not approve the extermination of the enemy; the policy of exterminating or, as it is barbarously said, liquidating enemies, is one of the most alarming developments of modern war and peace, from the point of view of those who desire the survivalCollection: War
A book is not harmless merely because no one is consciously offended by it.Collection: Book
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.Collection: Voice
The historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of literature from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order.Collection: Country
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow Life is very long Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom For Thine is Life is For Thine is the This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.Collection: Fall
To men of a certain type The suspicion that they are incapable of loving Is as disturbing to their self-esteem As, in cruder men, the fear of impotence.Collection: Love
The usual dog about the town is much inclined to play the clown.Collection: Dog
In spite of all the dishonour, the broken standards, the broken lives, The broken faith in one place or another, There was something left that was more than the tales Of old men on winter evenings.Collection: Winter
Words move, music moves Only in time; but that which is only living Can only die. Words, after speech, reach Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern, Can words or music reach The stillness.Collection: Moving
There are flood and drought over the eyes and in the mouth, dead water and dead sand contending for the upper hand. The parched eviscerate soil gapes at the vanity of toil, laughs without mirth. This is the death of the earth.Collection: Death
Shall I part my hair behind Do I dare to eat a peach I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.Collection: Beach
I am no prophet-and here's no great matter.Collection: Matter
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or thinkCollection: Thinking
Cling, swing, Spring, sing, Swing up into the apple tree.Collection: Spring
The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presenceCollection: Past
The Civil War is not ended: I question whether any serious civil war ever does end.Collection: Peace
The greatness of literature cannot be determined solely by literary standards though we must remember that whether it is literature or not can be determined only by literary standards.Collection: Greatness
Would it have been worth while, To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it towards some overwhelming questionCollection: Balls
Men dislike being awakened from their death in life.Collection: Men
Poetry is not an assertion of truth, but the making of that truth more fully real to us.Collection: Real
Do I dare disturb the universe?Collection: Fear
Destiny ... a word which means more than we can find any definitions for. It is a word which can have no meaning in a mechanical universe: if that which is wound up must run down, what destiny is there in that? Destiny is not necessitarianism, and it is not caprice: it is something essentially meaningful. Each man has his destiny, though some men are undoubtedly "men of destiny" in a sense in which most men are not.Collection: Meaningful
The greatest proof of Christianity for others is not how far a man can logically analyze his reasons for believing, but how far in practice he will stake his life on his belief.Collection: Christian
There's no vocabulary For love within a family, love that's lived in But not looked at, love within the light of which All else is seen, the love within which All other love finds speech. This love is silent.Collection: Love
People are only influenced in the direction in which they want to go, and influence consists largely in making them conscious of their wishes to proceed in that direction.Collection: People
Between the vision and the act lies the shadow.Collection: Lying
Where is the Life we lost in living?Collection: Lost
Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter.Collection: Love
At the still point, there the dance is.Collection: Beautiful
Not the intense moment Isolated, with no before and after, But a lifetime burning in every moment.Collection: Intense Moments