T. S. Eliot

“Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs, rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys, advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm, retreating to the corner of arm and knee, eager to be reassured, taking pleasure in the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree.”

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

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.”

“Our difficulties of the moment must always be dealt with somehow, but our permanent difficulties are difficulties of every moment.”

“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.”

“The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.”

“Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.”

“Any poet, if he is to survive beyond his 25th year, must alter; he must seek new literary influences; he will have different emotions to express.”

“A play should give you something to think about. When I see a play and understand it the first time, then I know it can't be much good.”

“Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself.”

“My greatest trouble is getting the curtain up and down.”

“Where there is no temple there shall be no homes.”

“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.”

“A toothache, or a violent passion, is not necessarily diminished by our knowledge of its causes, its character, its importance or insignificance.”

“I am an Anglo-Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature and a royalist in politics.”

“So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”

“So the lover must struggle for words.”

“Business today consists in persuading crowds.”

“It's strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words.”

“I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope, For hope would be hope for the wrong thing.”