T S Eliot Quotes

I don't know much about gods, but I think the river is a strong, brown god

~ T.s. Eliot

You are not here to verify,instruct yourself, or inform curiosityor carry report. You are here to kneelwhere prayer has been valid. And prayer is more than an order of words, the conscious occupation of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.

~ T. S. Eliot

I am alive to a usual objection to what is clearly part of my programme for the metier of poetry. The objection is that the doctrine requires a ridiculous amount of erudition (pedantry), a claim which can be rejected by appeal to the lives of poets in any pantheon. It will even be affirmed that much learning deadens or perverts poetic sensibility. While, however, we persist in believing that a poet ought to know as much as will not encroach upon his necessary receptivity and necessary laziness, it is not desirable to confine knowledge to whatever can be put into a useful shape for examinations, drawing rooms, or the still more pretentious modes of publicity. Some can absorb knowledge, the more tardy must sweat for it. Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum. What is to be insisted upon is that the poet must develop this consciousness throughout his career. What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

~ T.s. Eliot

And indeed there will be timeTo wonder, 'Do I shed?' and, 'Do I shed?'Time to turn back and stretch out on the bed,And give myself a bath before I'm fed --(They will say: 'It's the short-haired ones I prefer.')My flea collar buckled neatly in my fur,My expression cool and distant but softened by a gentle purr --(They will say: 'I'm allergic to his fur!')Do I dareJump up on the table?In an instant there is timeFor excursions and inversions that will make me seem unst

~ Henry N. Beard

But above and beyond there's still one name left over,And that is the name that you never will guess;The name that no human research can discover--But the cat himself knows, and will never confess.When you notice a cat in profound meditation,The reason, I tell you, is always the same:His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplationOf the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:His ineffable effableEffanineffableDeep and inscrutable singular Name.

~ T.s. Eliot