T.S. Eliot Quotes
I never had any preference for her, any more than I have a preference for breathing.
what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.
I cannot imagine myself without some opinion, but I wish to have good reasons for them.
Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.
On the other hand, she was disproportionately indulgent towards the failings of men, and was often heard to say that these were natural.
It would be narrowness to suppose that an artist can only care for the impressions of those who know the methods of his art as well as feel its effects. Art works for all whom it can touch.
But a good wife—a good unworldly woman—may really help a man, and keep him more independent.
Passion is of the nature of seed, and finds nourishment within, tending to a predominance which determines all currents towards itself, and makes the whole life its tributary.
A woman may get to love by degrees—the best fire does not flare up the soonest.
A pretty building I'm making, without either bricks or timber. I'm up i' the garret a'ready, and haven't so much as dug the foundation.
For what is love itself, for the one we love best? - an enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.
Fred dislikes the idea going into the ministry partly because he doesn't like "feeling obligated to look serious", and he centers his doubts on "what people expect of a clergyman".
Let even an affectionate Goliath get himself tied to a small tender thing, dreading to hurt it by pulling, and dreading still more to snap the cord, and which of the two, pray, will be master?
It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are still alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger for them.
Mrs. Bulstrode's naïve way of conciliating piety and worldliness, the nothingness of this life and desirability of cut glass, the consciousness at once of filthy rags and the best damask...
Bodily haste and exertion usually leave our thoughts very much at the mercy of our feelings and imagination.
Even when she was speaking, her soul was in prayer reposing on an unseen support.
She was no longer wresting with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.
In our instinctive rebellion against pain, we are children again, and demand an active will to wreak our vengeance on.
If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?
I shall never forget you. I have never forgotten anyone whom I once knew. My life has never been crowded, and seems not likely to be so.
It is curious what patches of hardness and tenderness lie side by side in men’s dispositions. I suppose he has some test by which he finds out whom Heaven cares for.
For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it.
Sane people did what their neighbours did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.
I’ve always felt that your belongings have never been on a level with you.
Her anger said, as anger is apt to say, that God was with her— that all heaven, though it were crowded with spirits watching them, must be on her side.
What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined to strengthen each other, to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories
If a man has a capacity for great thoughts, he is likely to overtake them before he is decrepit.
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.
Aye, aye, that's the way wi' thee: thee allays makes a peck o' thy own words out o' a pint o' the Bible's
It is just that I don’t know how I could live without the hope of her. It would be like learning to live with wooden legs.
The secret of our emotions never lies in the bare object, but in its subtle relations to our own past.
One’s self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is very unpleasant to find deprecated.
It is the favourite stratagem of our passions to sham a retreat, and to turn sharp round upon us at the moment we have made up our minds that the day is our own.
If we had lost our own chief good, other people’s good would remain, and that is worth trying for.
But I hasten to finish my story. Brevity is justified at once to those who readily understand, and to those who will never understand.
My life is too short, and God’s work is too great for me to think of making a home for myself in this world.
Animals are such agreeable friends―they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
He has got no good red blood in his body, " said Sir James."No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying glass, and it was all semicolons and parentheses, " said Mrs. Cadwallader.
It was one of those dangerous moments when speech is at once sincere and deceptive, when feeling, rising high above its average depth, leaves flood-marks which are never reached again.
But let the wise be warned against too great readiness at explanation: it multiplies the sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for reckoners sure to go wrong.
She had forgotten his faults as we forgetthe sorrows of our departed childhood.
What can promote innocent mirth, and I may say virtue, more than a good riddle?
Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbor's buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.