T.S. Eliot

Though you forget the way to the Temple,There is one who remembers the way to your door: Life you may evade, but Death you shall not. You shall not deny the Stranger.

Footfalls echo in the memorydown the passage we did not taketowards the door we never openedinto the rose garden. My words echothus, in your mind

Everyone__ alone__r so it seems to me.They make noises, and think they are talking to each other;They make faces, and think they understand each other,And I__ sure they don__. Is that delusion?Can we only loveSomething created in our own imaginations?

The only wisdom we can hope to acquireIs the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?Where is the knowledge we have lost in infomation?

O Light Invisible, we praise Thee! Too bright for mortal vision. O Greater Light, we praise Thee for the less; The eastern light our spires touch at morning, The light that slants upon our western doors at evening, The twilight over stagnant pools at batflight, Moon light and star light, owl and moth light, Glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade. O Light Invisible, we worship Thee! We thank Thee for the light that we have kindled, The light of altar and of sanctuary; Small lights of those who meditate at midnight And lights directed through the coloured panes of windows And light reflected from the polished stone, The gilded carven wood, the coloured fresco. Our gaze is submarine, our eyes look upward And see the light that fractures through unquiet water. We see the light but see not whence it comes. O Light Invisible, we glorify Thee!

Time and the bell have buried the day,The black cloud carries the sun away.Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematisStray down, bend to us; tendril and sprayClutch and cling? ChillFingers of yew be curledDown on us? After the kingfisher's wingHas answered light to light, and is silent, the light is stillAt the still point of the turning world.

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.

We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.

For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice.

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

Truth on our level is a different thing from truth for the jellyfish.

Two people who know they do not understand each other, breeding children whom they do not understand and who will never understand them.

A christian martyrdom is never an accident, for Saints are not made by accident.

Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.

music heard so deeplyThat it is not heard at all, butyou are the musicWhile the music lasts.

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

It seems that one ought to read in two ways: 1) because of a particular and personal interest, which makes the thing one's own, regardless of what other people think of the book 2) to a certain extent, because it is something one 'ought to have read' but one must be quite clear this why one is reading.