"Twentieth-century art may start with nothing, but it flourishes by virtue of its belief in itself, in the possibility of control over what seems essentially uncontrollable, in the coherence of the inchoate, and in its ability to create its own values."

Rating:

  rate this quote
Topic: none  help us select a topic for this quote

More quotes from: T. S. Eliot

• "A play should give you something to think about. When I see a play and ..."
• "An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest ..."
• "And we must think no further of you. "
• "Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity. "
• "Any poet, if he is to survive beyond his 25th year, must alter; he must ..."
• "April is the cruellest month. "
• "As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, ..."
• "At twenty you have many desires which hide the truth, but beyond forty there are ..."
• "Business today consists in persuading crowds. "
• "Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage which we did not take, towards the ..."
• "For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business. "
• "Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood. "
• "Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who ..."
• "Humankind cannot bear very much reality. "
• "I am an Anglo-Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature and a royalist in politics. "
• "I don't believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life ..."
• "I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different. "
• "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. "
• "I must say Bernard Shaw is greatly improved by music. "
• "If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are? "
• "If you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred ..."

• "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal. "
• "In my beginning is my end. "
• "It ends not with a bang, but a whimper. "
• "It is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the ..."
• "It's strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so ..."
• "Let's not be narrow, nasty, and negative. "
• "My greatest trouble is getting the curtain up and down. "
• "Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one ..."
• "Our difficulties of the moment must always be dealt with somehow, but our permanent difficulties ..."
• "Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature. "
• "People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events. "
• "Playwriting gets into your blood and you can't stop it. At least not until the ..."
• "Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is ..."
• "Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, ..."
• "Poetry should help, not only to refine the language of the time, but to prevent ..."
• "So the lover must struggle for words. "
• "Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers. "
• "Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the ..."
• "The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living. "
• "The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong ..."

• "The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first. "
• "The most important thing for poets to do is to write as little as possible. "
• "The Nobel is a ticket to one's own funeral. No one has ever done anything ..."
• "There is no method but to be very intelligent. "
• "There is not a more repulsive spectacle than on old man who will not forsake ..."
• "This is the way the world ends: not with a bang, but a whimper. "
• "This love is silent. "
• "We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute ..."
• "We must be steady enough in ourselves, to be open and to let the winds ..."
• "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be ..."
• "What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is ..."
• "Where is all the knowledge we lost with information? "
• "Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have ..."
• "You are the music while the music lasts. "