188 quotes
Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.
Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)
A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments.
It is certain that a book is not harmless merely because no one is consciously offended by it.
Religion and Literature (1935)
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.
Murder in the Cathedral (1935)
My general point of view may be described as classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and Anglo-Catholic in religion.
Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.
It is a test (a positive test, I do not assert that it is always valid negatively), that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
Dante (1929)
A tradition without intelligence is not worth having.
After Strange Gods (1934)
The soul of Man must quicken to creation.
Choruses from The Rock (1934)
Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.
Ash-Wednesday (1930)
Signs are taken for wonders. "We would see a sign!"
The word within a word, unable to speak a word,
Swaddled with darkness.
Poems (1920)
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre —
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
Stand on the highest pavement of the stair—
Lean on a garden urn—
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.
Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)
You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure,
That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight and the noon’s repose.
Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)
Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day.
Ash-Wednesday (1930)
I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me.
The work of creation is never without travail.
Choruses from The Rock (1934)