WednesdayFeb 04, 2026
Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969
I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.
Here I am, an old man in a dry month, Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.
He knew the anguish of the marrow The ague of the skeleton; No contact possible to flesh Allayed the fever of the bone.
April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in a forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers.
Upon the glazen shelves kept watch Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith The army of unalterable law.
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous Almost, at times, the Fool.
Birth, copulation, and death. That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks.
The Civil War is not ended: I question whether any serious civil war ever does end.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze The troubled midnight and the noon's repose.
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.
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.
I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled.
My life is light, waiting for the death wind, Like a feather on the back of my hand.
Webster was much possessed by death And saw the skull beneath the skin.
In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids Sprouting despondently at area gates.
Do I dare Disturb the universe?
And indeed there will be time To wonder, 'Do I dare?' and, 'Do I dare?' Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair.
Dayodhuam: I have heard the key Turn in the door once and turn once only We think of the key, each in his prison Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison.
An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.
What we call the beginning Is often the end And to make an end Is to make a new beginning. The end is where we start from.
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.
We shall never 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.
And I must borrow every changing shape To find expression.
And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you, Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose garden.
After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions Guides us by vanities.
Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell And the profit and loss.
These fragments I have shored against my ruins.
Uncorseted, her friendly bust Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.
Friendship should be more than biting time can sever.
Hell is oneself, Hell is alone, the other figures in it, merely projections.
The definition of hell is a place where nothing connects with nothing.
The hippopotamus's day Is passed in sleep; at night he hunts; God works in a mysterious way The Church can sleep and feed at once.
Shape without form, shade without color, Paralyzed force, gesture without motion; Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember usif at allnot as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.
I shall not want Honor in Heaven For I shall meet Sir Philip Sidney And have talk with Coriolanus And other heroes of that kidney.
Hurry up, please, its time.
I grow old ... I grow old ... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow.
Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important.
Old men ought to be explorers Here and there does not matter We must be still and still moving Into another intensity For further union, a deeper communion Through the dark cold and the empty desolation ... In my end is my beginning.
Journey of the Magi 'A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter.' And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory, Lying down in the melti
Lady of silences Calm and distressed Torn and most whole Rose of memory Rose of forgetfulness Exhausted and life-giving Worried reposeful The single Rose Is now the Garden Where all loves end Terminate torment Of love unsatisfied The greater torment Of love satisfied End of the endless Journey to no end Conclusion of all that Is inconclusible Speech without word and Word of no speech Grace to the Mother For the Garden Where all love ends.
He laughed like an irresponsible foetus.
His laughter tinkled among the teacups.
We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Learning together.
Let us go then, you and I When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table.
To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.
Turning Wearily, as one would turn to nod goodbye to Rochefoucauld, If the street were time and he as the end of the street.
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?
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.
We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion.
When lovely woman stoops to folly and Paces about her room again, alone, She smooths her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone.
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair.
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.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each; I do not think they will sing to me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
Music heard so deeply that it is not heard at all, but you are the music while the music lasts.
You are the music while the music lasts.
The nightingales are singing near The Convent of the Sacred Heart, And sang within the bloody wood When Agamemnon cried aloud, And let their liquid siftings fall To stain the stiff dishonored shroud.
Here is no water but only rock.
This oval O cropped out with teeth.
Over buttered scones and crumpets Weeping, weeping multitudes Droop in a hundred A.B.C.'s.
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
Poetry can communicate before it is understood.
We must believe that 'emotion recollected in tranquillity' is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration of a very great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not 'recollected' and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is 'tranquil' only in that it is a passive attending upon the event.
Immature poets borrow, mature poets steal.
If you haven't the strength to impose your own terms upon life, you must accept the terms it offers you.
I think we are in rats' alley Where the dead men lost their bones.
Reorganized upon the floor She yawns and draws a stocking up.
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
Paint me the bold anfractuous rocks Faced by the snarled and yelping seas.
You know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock) And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag It's so elegant So intelligent.
Quick now, here now, always A condition of complete simplicity (costing not less than everything) And all shall be well All manner of things shall be well When the tongues of flame are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and rose are one.
Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.
But at my back from time to time I hear The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring. O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter And on her daughter They wash their feet in soda water.
The end is where we start from.
Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.
The one thing you can do is to do nothing. Wait ... You will find that you survive humiliation and that's an experience of incalculable value.
The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn.
In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.
One thinks of all the hands That are raising dingy shades In a thousand furnished rooms.
Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past.
There will be time to murder and create.
It is impossible to design a system so perfect that no one needs to be good.
Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm but the harm does not interest them.
Twelve o'clock. Along the reaches of the street Held in a lunar synthesis.
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
At the violet hour, when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a taxi throbbing waiting I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives.
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter And on her daughter They wash their feet in soda water.
Stand on the highest pavement of the stair Lean on a garden urn Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.
Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper tree.
Because these wings are no longer wings to fly But merely vans to beat the air The air which is now thoroughly small and dry Smaller and dryer than the will Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.
A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter.
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
Each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling.
That was my way of putting itnot very satisfactory: A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion, Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle With words and meanings.
Last seasons fruit is eaten And the fullfed beast shall kick the empty pail. For last years words belong to last years language And next years words await another voice.
This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.
Yeats was the greatest poet of our times ... certainly the greatest in this language, and so far as I am able to judge, in any language.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes.
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