t. s. Eliot

“Henry James had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

“It's strange that words are so inadequate.

Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath,

So the lover must struggle for words.”

“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

“Philosophy--the purple bullfinch in the lilac tree.”

“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.”

“Poetry is not an assertion of truth, but the making of that truth more fully real to us.”

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

“The most important thing for poets to do is to write as little as possible.”

“There is no method but to be very intelligent.”

“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.”

“Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair.”