T.S. Eliot

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.

Under the penitential gatesSustained by staring SeraphimWhere the souls of the devoutBurn invisible and dim.

We are being made aware that the organization of society on the principle of private profit, as well as public destruction, is leading both to the deformation of humanity by unregulated industrialism, and to the exhaustion of natural resources, and that a good deal of our material progress is a progress for which succeeding generations may have to pay dearly.

We are the hollow menWe are the stuffed menLeaning togetherHeadpiece filled with straw. Alas!Our dried voices, whenWe whisper togetherAre quiet and meaninglessAs wind in dry grassOr rats' feet over broken glassIn our dry cellarShape without form, shade without colour,Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Our second danger is to associate tradition with the immovable; to think of it as something hostile to all change; to aim to return to some previous condition which we imagine as having been capable of preservation in perpetuity, instead of aiming to stimulate the life which produced that condition in its time. . . . a tradition without intelligence is not worth having . . .

If time and space, as sages say,Are things which cannot be,The sun which does not feel decayNo greater is than we.So why, Love, should we ever prayTo live a century?The butterfly that lives a dayHas lived eternity.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse

But the Church cannot be, in any political sense, either conservative or liberal, or revolutionary. Conservatism is too often conservation of the wrong things: liberalism a relaxation of discipline; revolution a denial of the permanent things.

And right action is freedom from past and future also.For most of us, this is the aim never to be realized. Who are only undefeated because we have gone on trying. "The Dry Salvages

Before a Cat will condescendTo treat you as a trusted friend,Some little token of esteemIs needed, like a dish of cream;And you might now and then supplySome caviare, or Strassburg Pie,Some potted grouse, or salmon paste __e's sure to have his personal taste.(I know a Cat, who makes a habitOf eating nothing else but rabbit,And when he's finished, licks his pawsSo's not to waste the onion sauce.)A Cat's entitled to expectThese evidences of respect.And so in time you reach your aim,And finally call him by his name.

Unreal friendship may turn to real But real friendship, once ended, cannot be mended

Do not let me hearOf the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.

The backward look behind the assuranceOf recorded history, the backward half-lookOver the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.

Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity

Do I dare Disturb the universe?

The dripping blood our only drink,The bloody flesh our only food:In spite of which we like to thinkThat we are sound, substantial flesh and blood--Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.