Tijanak > Tijanak's Quotes

“To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

“If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?”
― T.S. Eliot

“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”
― T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.”
― T.S. Eliot.

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
― Harry Crosby, Transit of Venus

“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
― T.S. Eliot

“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
― T.S. Eliot

“We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party

“What is hell? 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.”
― T.S. Eliot

“For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”
― T.S. Eliot

“So I find words I never thought to speak

In streets I never thought I should revisit

When I left my body on a distant shore.”
― T.S. Eliot

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“We practically always excuse things when we understand them”
― Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time

“Out of life's storm I carried only a few ideas - and not one feeling.”
― Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time

“I have an unfortunate character; whether it is my upbringing that made me like that or God who created me so, I do not know. I know only that if I cause unhappiness to others, I myself am no less happy. I realize this is poor consolation for them - but the fact remains that it is so. In my early youth, after leaving the guardianship of my parents, I plunged into all the pleasures money could buy, and naturally these pleasures grew distasteful to me. Then I went into high society, but soon enough grew tired of it; I fell in love with beautiful society women and was loved by them, but their love only aggravated my imagination and vanity while my heart remained desolate... I began to read and to study, but wearied of learning, too; I saw that neither fame nor happiness depended on it in the slightest, for the happiest people were the ignorant, and fame was a matter of luck, to achieve which you only had to be shrewd...”
― Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time

“I prefer to doubt everything. Such a disposition does not preclude a resolute character. On the contrary, as far as I am concerned, I always advance more boldly when I don't know what is waiting me for me. After all, nothing worse than death can happen-and death you can't escape!”
― Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
― Marcel Proust

“My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing.”
― Marcel Proust

“Moral wounds have this peculiarity - they may be hidden, but they never close; always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, they remain fresh and open in the heart.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“So plant your own gardens and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.”
― Dante Alighieri

“Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O Never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.”
― W. B. Yeats, In the Seven Woods: Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age

“Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet.”
― W. B. Yeats

“How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.”
― William Butler Yeats, The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

“Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.”
― William Butler Yeats

“Any fool can fight a winning battle, but it needs character to fight a losing one, and that should inspire us; which reminds me that I dreamed the other night that I was being hanged, but was the life and soul of the party.”
― William Butler Yeats

“Too many things are occurring for even a big heart to hold.”
― W.B. Yeats, Dyland Thomas T.S. Eliot

“Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those who are not entirely beautiful.”
― William Butler Yeats, The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

“One should say before sleeping: I have lived many lives. I have been a slave and a prince. Many a beloved has sat upon my knee and I have sat upon the knees of many a beloved. Everything that has been shall be again.”
― W. B. Yeats

“Literature is always personal, always one man's vision of the world, one man's experience, and it can only be popular when men are ready to welcome the visions of others.”
― W.B. Yeats