188 quotes
The 'greatness' of literature cannot be determined solely by literary standards; though we must remember that whether it is literature or not can be determined only by literary standards.
Religion and Literature (1935)
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
There is one who remembers the way to your door:
Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.
You shall not deny the Stranger.
Choruses from The Rock (1934)
Let me show you the work of the humble. Listen.
Choruses from The Rock (1934)
The broad-backed hippopotamus
Rests on his belly in the mud;
Although he seems so firm to us
He is merely flesh and blood.
Poems (1920)
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
It is obvious that we can no more explain a passion to a person who has never experienced it than we can explain light to the blind.
Every moment is a fresh beginning.
The Cocktail Party (1949)
No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job.…Poetry…remains one person talking to another....no poet can write a poem of amplitude unless he is the master of the prosaic.
The world turns and the world changes,
But one thing does not change.
In all of my years, one thing does not change,
However you disguise it, this thing does not change:
The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.
Choruses from The Rock (1934)
For some are sane and some are mad
And some are good and some are bad
And some are better, some are worse —
But all may be described in verse.
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939)
After such knowledge, what forgiveness?
Poems (1920)
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us — if at all — not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
The Hollow Men (1925)
The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript
Sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn.
Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)
Upon the glazen shelves kept watch
Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith,
The army of unalterable law.
Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion.
The Hollow Men (1925)
[A] wrong attitude towards nature implies, somewhere, a wrong attitude towards God.
The Idea of a Christian Society (1939)
He's the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad's despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime — Macavity's not there!
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939)
And the wind shall say: "Here were decent godless people:
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls."
Choruses from The Rock (1934)