1. “A book is not harmless merely because no one is consciously offended by it.”
2. “Against the
Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the center of the silent
Word."
3. "All cases are unique and very similar to others."
4. “And all shall be well
And 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 the rose are one.”
5. “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.”
6. “Art never improves, but . . . the material of art is never quite the same.”
7. "A tradition without intelligence is not worth having."
8. “At the still point of the turning world.”
9. “Between the idea / And the reality / Between the motion / And the act / Falls the Shadow.”
10. “Birth, and copulation, and death.
That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks;
Birth, copulation and death.”
11. ”Correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays.”
12. "Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind."
13. "For every life and every act consequence of good and evil can be shown and as in time results of many deeds are blended so good and evil in the end become confounded."
14. “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”
15. “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.”
16. “Hell is oneself,
Hell is alone, the other figures in it
Merely projections. There is nothing to escape
From
And nothing to escape to. One is always alone."
17. “Here undoubtedly lies the chief poetic energy: --in the force of imagination that pierces or exalts the solid fact, instead of floating among cloud-pictures.”
18. “Human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.”
19. “I do not approve the extermination of the enemy; the policy of exterminating or, as it is barbarously said, liquidating enemies, is one of the most alarming developments of modern war and peace, from the point of view of those who desire the survival of culture. One needs the enemy.”
20. ”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.“
21. “I like not only to be loved, but to be told I am loved.”
22. “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.”
23. "In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."
24. “In my beginning is my end.”
25. ”In my end is my beginning.”
26. “I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope,
for hope would be hope for the wrong thing;
Wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing;
There is yet faith;
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
27. “It is by no means self-evident that human beings are most real when most violently excited; violent physical passions do not in themselves differentiate men from each other, but rather tend to reduce them to the same state.”
28. “It is impossible to design a system so perfect that no one needs to be good.”
29. ”It is not enough to understand what we ought to be, unless we know what we are; and we do not understand what we are, unless we know what we ought to be.”
30. "It's not wise to violate rules until you know how to observe them."
31. ”It's strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words.”
32. “It seems just possible that a poem might happen to a very young man: but a poem is not poetry -- that is a life.”
33. “It's strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words.”
34. “I take as metaphysical poetry that in which what is ordinarily apprehensible only by thought is brought within the grasp of feeling, or that in which what is ordinarily only felt is transformed into thought without ceasing to be feeling.”
35. “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”
36. ”Love is most nearly itself when
here and now cease to matter.”
37. "Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important."
38. “Most of us who turn to any subject we love remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untried volume, or sat with parted lips listening to a new talker, or for very lack of books began to listen to the voices within, as the first traceable beginning of our love.”
39. “My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak
What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
I never know what you are thinking. Think.”
40. “One of the surest of tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.”
41. “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
42. “Our language, or any civilised language, is like the phoenix: it springs anew from its own ashes.”
43. "People exercise an unconscious selection in being influenced."
44. “Plainness has its peculiar temptations quite as much as beauty.”
45. “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.”
46. “Poetry should help, not only to refine the language of the time, but to prevent it from changing too rapidly.”
47. “Redeem / The time. Redeem / The unread vision in the higher dream.”
48. “So far as we are human, what we do must be either evil or good: so far as we do evil or good, we are human: and it is better, in a paradoxical way, to do evil than to do nothing: at least we exist.”
49. ”Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.”
50. “Someone said, "The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did." Precisely, and they are that which we know.
51. “Success is relative: it's what we can make of the mess we have made of things.”
52. "The awful daring of a moment's surrender which an age of prudence can never retract."
53. "The dream crossed twilight between birth and dying."
54. "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."
55. “The poet is occupied with frontiers beyond which words fail, though meanings still exist.”
56. “The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.”
57. ”The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”
58. “The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.”
59. "There is no method but to be very intelligent."
60. “There is one order of beauty which seems made to turn heads. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle.”
61. “There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.”
62. “The river is within us, the sea is all about us.”
63. "Think not forever of yourselves, O Chiefs, nor of your own generation. Think of continuing generations of our families, think of our grandchildren and of those yet unborn, whose faces are coming from beneath the ground."
64. “This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
We shall not 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.”
65. “Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.”
66. “To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing,
to contemplate the beautiful thing:
that is enough for one man's life.”
67. “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.”
68. “What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”
69. “Where does one go from a world of insanity?
Somewhere on the other side of despair. “
70. “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
71. “You are not the same people who left that station / Or who will arrive at any terminus, / While the narrowing rails slide together behind you.”
72. ”You are the music while the music lasts.”
2. “Against the
Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the center of the silent
Word."
3. "All cases are unique and very similar to others."
4. “And all shall be well
And 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 the rose are one.”
5. “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.”
6. “Art never improves, but . . . the material of art is never quite the same.”
7. "A tradition without intelligence is not worth having."
8. “At the still point of the turning world.”
9. “Between the idea / And the reality / Between the motion / And the act / Falls the Shadow.”
10. “Birth, and copulation, and death.
That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks;
Birth, copulation and death.”
11. ”Correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays.”
12. "Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind."
13. "For every life and every act consequence of good and evil can be shown and as in time results of many deeds are blended so good and evil in the end become confounded."
14. “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”
15. “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.”
16. “Hell is oneself,
Hell is alone, the other figures in it
Merely projections. There is nothing to escape
From
And nothing to escape to. One is always alone."
17. “Here undoubtedly lies the chief poetic energy: --in the force of imagination that pierces or exalts the solid fact, instead of floating among cloud-pictures.”
18. “Human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.”
19. “I do not approve the extermination of the enemy; the policy of exterminating or, as it is barbarously said, liquidating enemies, is one of the most alarming developments of modern war and peace, from the point of view of those who desire the survival of culture. One needs the enemy.”
20. ”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.“
21. “I like not only to be loved, but to be told I am loved.”
22. “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.”
23. "In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."
24. “In my beginning is my end.”
25. ”In my end is my beginning.”
26. “I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope,
for hope would be hope for the wrong thing;
Wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing;
There is yet faith;
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
27. “It is by no means self-evident that human beings are most real when most violently excited; violent physical passions do not in themselves differentiate men from each other, but rather tend to reduce them to the same state.”
28. “It is impossible to design a system so perfect that no one needs to be good.”
29. ”It is not enough to understand what we ought to be, unless we know what we are; and we do not understand what we are, unless we know what we ought to be.”
30. "It's not wise to violate rules until you know how to observe them."
31. ”It's strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words.”
32. “It seems just possible that a poem might happen to a very young man: but a poem is not poetry -- that is a life.”
33. “It's strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words.”
34. “I take as metaphysical poetry that in which what is ordinarily apprehensible only by thought is brought within the grasp of feeling, or that in which what is ordinarily only felt is transformed into thought without ceasing to be feeling.”
35. “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”
36. ”Love is most nearly itself when
here and now cease to matter.”
37. "Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important."
38. “Most of us who turn to any subject we love remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untried volume, or sat with parted lips listening to a new talker, or for very lack of books began to listen to the voices within, as the first traceable beginning of our love.”
39. “My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak
What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
I never know what you are thinking. Think.”
40. “One of the surest of tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.”
41. “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
42. “Our language, or any civilised language, is like the phoenix: it springs anew from its own ashes.”
43. "People exercise an unconscious selection in being influenced."
44. “Plainness has its peculiar temptations quite as much as beauty.”
45. “Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.”
46. “Poetry should help, not only to refine the language of the time, but to prevent it from changing too rapidly.”
47. “Redeem / The time. Redeem / The unread vision in the higher dream.”
48. “So far as we are human, what we do must be either evil or good: so far as we do evil or good, we are human: and it is better, in a paradoxical way, to do evil than to do nothing: at least we exist.”
49. ”Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.”
50. “Someone said, "The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did." Precisely, and they are that which we know.
51. “Success is relative: it's what we can make of the mess we have made of things.”
52. "The awful daring of a moment's surrender which an age of prudence can never retract."
53. "The dream crossed twilight between birth and dying."
54. "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."
55. “The poet is occupied with frontiers beyond which words fail, though meanings still exist.”
56. “The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.”
57. ”The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”
58. “The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.”
59. "There is no method but to be very intelligent."
60. “There is one order of beauty which seems made to turn heads. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle.”
61. “There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.”
62. “The river is within us, the sea is all about us.”
63. "Think not forever of yourselves, O Chiefs, nor of your own generation. Think of continuing generations of our families, think of our grandchildren and of those yet unborn, whose faces are coming from beneath the ground."
64. “This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
We shall not 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.”
65. “Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.”
66. “To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing,
to contemplate the beautiful thing:
that is enough for one man's life.”
67. “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.”
68. “What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”
69. “Where does one go from a world of insanity?
Somewhere on the other side of despair. “
70. “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
71. “You are not the same people who left that station / Or who will arrive at any terminus, / While the narrowing rails slide together behind you.”
72. ”You are the music while the music lasts.”
