"When a great poet has lived certain things have been done once for all and cannot be achieved again.

Between the desireAnd the spasm,Between the potencyAnd the existence,Between the essenceAnd the descent,Falls the Shadow.
~ T. S. Eliot ~












Between the desireAnd the spasm,Between the potencyAnd the existence,Between the essenceAnd the desc...
Show More
More T. S. Eliot quotes
"When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work it is constantly amalgamating disparate experiences.
"The dream crossed twilight between birth and dying.
"The poet's mind is ... a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings phrases images which remain there until all the particles which ...
"No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: he may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.
"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.
"As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the perm...
"Philosophy - the purple bullfinch in the lilac tree.
"A toothache, or a violent passion, is not necessarily diminished by our knowledge of its causes, its character, its importance or insignificance.
"Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
"Birth copulation and death. That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks.
"The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are ...
"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
"Till Human voices wake us, and we drown.
"Not the intense momentIsolated, with no before and after,But a lifetime burning in every moment.