Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.
Our difficulties of the moment must always be dealt with somehow, but our permanent difficulties are difficulties of every moment.
The hippopotamus's day Is passed in sleep; at night he hunts; God works in a mysterious way- The Church can sleep and feed at once.
Why should men love the Church? Why should they love her laws? She tells them of Life and Death, and of all that they would forget.
When the whole world is running headlong towards the precipice, one who walks in the opposite direction is looked at as being crazy.
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.
The soul is so far from being a monad that we have not only to interpret other souls to ourself but to interpret ourself to ourself.
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.
Ash on an old man's sleeve / Is all the ash the burnt roses leave, / Dust in the air suspended / Marks the place where a story ended.
To each individual the world will take on a different connotation of meaning-the important lies in the desire to search for an answer.
To country people Cows are mild, And flee from any stick they throw; But I’m a timid town bred child, And all the cattle seem to know.
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.
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is.
A play should give you something to think about. When I see a play and understand it the first time, then I know it can't be much good.
With a poem you can say 'I got my feeling into words for myself. I now have the equivalent in words for that much of what I have felt.'
I am moved by fancies that are curled, around these images and cling, the notion of some infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing.
Sensibility alters from generation to generation in everybody, whether we will or no; but expression is only altered by a man of genius.
This is the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating every word.
We shall not cease from exploring, And the end of our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, and I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, and in short, I was afraid.
Yeats was the greatest poet of our times . . . certainly the greatest in this language, and so far as I am able to judge, in any language.
Someone said, 'The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.' Precisely, and they are that which we know.
Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
They don't understand what it is to be awake, / To be living on several planes at once / Though one cannot speak with several voices at once.
O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart: for the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.
You must not on any account give me credit for being penetrating. I have impressed people that way before, and the result is always disaster.
I do not believe that any writer has ever exposed this bovarysme, the human will to see things as they are not, more clearly than Shakespeare.
All time is eternal, moving inexorably toward an end which we believe is a result of our actions, but over which our control is mere illusion.
Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.
Fading, fading: strength beyond hope and despair climbing the third stair. Lord, I am not worthy Lord, I am not worthy but speak the word only.
If we are moved by a poem, it has meant something, perhaps something important, to us; if we are not moved, then it is, as poetry, meaningless.
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous. Resign yourself to be the fool you are... ...We must always take risks. That is our destiny.
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.
Any poet, if he is to survive beyond his 25th year, must alter; he must seek new literary influences; he will have different emotions to express.
For I have known them all already, known them all— Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
A toothache, or a violent passion, is not necessarily diminished by our knowledge of its causes, its character, its importance or insignificance.
That meddling in other people's affairs...formerly conducted by the most discreet intrigue is now openly advocated under the name of intervention.
And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness.
Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.
A national culture, if it is to flourish, should be a constellation of cultures, the constitutes of which, benefiting each other, benefit the whole.
Each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling.
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be: am an attendant lord, one that will do to swell a progress, start a scene or two, advise the prince.
Whatever you think, be sure it is what you think; whatever you want, be sure that is what you want; whatever you feel, be sure that is what you feel.
When lovely woman stoops to folly and Paces about her room again, alone, She smooths her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone.
The overwhelming pressure of mediocrity, sluggish and indomitable as a glacier, will mitigate the most violent, and depress the most exalted revolution.
To men of a certain type The suspicion that they are incapable of loving Is as disturbing to their self-esteem As, in cruder men, the fear of impotence.
Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them.
It is not enough to understand what we ought to be, unless we know what we are; and we do not understand what we are, unless we know what we ought to be.
Hell is oneself, hell is alone, the other figures in it merely projections. There is nothing to escape from and nothing to escape to. One is always alone.