What is your favourite quote from T.S. Eliot?

Answer 1

Humankind cannot bear very much reality

"Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present."

Four Quartets 1: Burnt Norton

Answer 2

there is a story in hugh kenning's 'the pound era' about how pound, wyndham lewis and eliot were once dining at an upmarket london restaurant.

at the end of the meal they called for the cheese and fancies tray, and eliot - who up until then had taken little interest in the meal - leaned forward and began poking a small piece of blue-veined cheese with his cake fork.

'and what is this?' he asked the embarassed cheesewaiter.

the cheesewaiter consulted his list of fancies, but couldn't find an entry for the piece (which was clearly the remains of a much larger block).

'ha!' shouted eliot, 'an anonymous cheese!' - and before anyone else could say anything he speared the piece and swallowed it, rind and all.

i have always felt that this story tells you everything you need to know about eliot, both as a poet and as a man.

Answer 3

I have a few but here are two.

Humankind cannot stand very much reality.
T. S. Eliot

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.
T. S. Eliot, "Tradition and the Individual Talent", II (The Sacred Wood, 1922)

What are your favorites?

Answer 4

From "The Waste Land:"

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.

And from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:"

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Answer 5

From "The Hollow Men"

Between the idea
and the reality
Between the motion
and the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the concept
and the creation
Between the emotion
and the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Answer 6

i wanted to thank you for asking. i got to reread some poems of which i haven't the pleasure of time to do so. and now that i did, i realized how eliot saw women, and i got sad. maybe, i found it difficult to see how women seemed shallow (excuse my way of saying~objects) in context compared to men(though they prove to be good binders for imagery). i don't really know exactly.

"You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see."
from the love song of j. alfred prufrock

i hope you like that line too. speaks so much of us.

Answer 7

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Answer 8

spoons in coffee cups makes me sick
and the green fuse that drives the flower is not of my blood
how I wish that some of this should not be writ
it is not a bang nor a whimper
that blames the world
to the cinder just cos we are kind
only cut asunder.

Answer 9

T.S Eliot? You know I've heard the name. . . don't know who it is.

Should get some good ones with this question.

Answer 10

I grow old, i grow old
I shall wear my trousers rolled?!!!

I love his two poems "The lovesong of prufrock" and "rhapsody" but too forgetful to remember exact lines