 |
Action(s)
|
|
The awful daring of a moment's surrender which an age of prudence can never retract.
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
|
|
Age
|
|
|
The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always asked to do things, and you are not yet decrepit enough to turn them down.
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
|
|
|
I don't believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates.
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
|
|
Art
|
|
|
The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
|
|
|
Art never improves, but the material of art is never quite the same.
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
|
|
Authors & Writing
|
|
|
An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better.
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
|
|
|
I suppose some editors are failed writers; but so are most writers.
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
|
|
|
A play should give you something to think about. When I see a play and understand it the first time, then I know it can't be much good.
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot, "New York Post", September 22, 1963
|
|
|
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
|
|
Baby, Babies
|
|
|
Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs, rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys, advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm, retreating to the corner of arm and knee, eager to be reassured, taking pleasure in the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree.
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
|
|
Books
|
|
|
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.
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
|
|
Communication
|
|
|
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
|
|
Consequences
|
|
|
For every life and every act consequence of good and evil can be shown and as in time results of many deeds are blended so good and evil in the end become confounded.
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
|
|
Criticism
|
|
|
We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
|
|
Culture
|
|
|
In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo.
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
|
|
Dance, Dancing
|
|
|
I said to my soul
Be still
And wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing
And wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing
There is yet faith
But the faith and the hope and the love
Are all in the waiting
And do not think
For you are not ready for thought
So the darkness shall be the light
And the stillness
The dancing
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot, Four Quartets
|
|
Death
|
|
|
And what the dead had no speech for, when living, they can tell you, being dead: the communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
|
|
Decisions
|
|
|
In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
|
|
Discovery
|
|
|
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot, Little Gidding (from the last of his Four Quartets)
|
|
Emotions
|
|
|
Our emotions are only incidents in the effort to keep day and night together.
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
|
|
Endings
|
|
|
What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot, "Four Quartets"
|
|
Evil
|
|
|
So far as we are human, what we do must be either evil or good: so far as we do evil or good, we are human: and it is better, in a paradoxical way, to do evil than to do nothing: at least we exist.
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
|
|
Fashion
|
|
|
We do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test of its value -- a test, it is true, which can only be slowly and cautiously applied, for we are none of us infallible judges of conformity.
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
|
|
Fear
|
|
|
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
|
|
|
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head grown slightly bald brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
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.
-TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot, Excerpted from: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
|
Books by and about TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot