188 quotes
Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939)
The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious.
Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
Preface to Transit of Venus: Poems by Harry Crosby (1931)
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen.
Ash-Wednesday (1930)
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
The Waste Land (1922)
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.
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
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.
Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)
Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.
Choruses from The Rock (1934)
This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks.
Ash-Wednesday (1930)
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
The Hollow Men (1925)
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
Mr. Aldous Huxley, who is perhaps one of those people who have to perpetrate thirty bad novels before producing a good one, has a certain natural — but little developed — aptitude for seriousness.
I say to you: Make perfect your will.
I say: take no thought of the harvest,
But only of proper sowing.
Choruses from The Rock (1934)
This is the dead land
This is cactus land.
The Hollow Men (1925)
It is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.
about radio; Cited in: Robert Andrews (1987)
What life have you, if you have not life together?
There is not life that is not in community,
And no community not lived in praise of God.
Choruses from The Rock (1934)
It is not enthusiasm, but dogma, that differentiates a Christian from a pagan society.
The Idea of a Christian Society (1939)
The division between those who accept, and those who deny, Christian revelation I take to be the most profound division between human beings.
Revelation (1937)
A toothache, or a violent passion, is not necessarily diminished by our knowledge of its causes, its character, its importance or insignificance.