Jeff Pierce > Jeff's Quotes

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

“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.”
― T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man”
― T.S. Eliot

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

“Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.”
― T.S. Eliot

“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.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity”
― T.S. Eliot

“Half 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. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”
― T.S. Eliot

“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...”
― T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party

“Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair.”
― T.S. Eliot.

“I love reading another reader’s list of favorites. Even when I find I do not share their tastes or predilections, I am provoked to compare, contrast, and contradict. It is a most healthy exercise, and one altogether fruitful.”
― T.S. Eliot

“An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry. ”
― T.S. Eliot

“I must tell you that I should really like to think there's something wrong with me- Because, if there isn't, then there's something wrong with the world itself-and that's much more frightening! That would be terrible. So I'd rather believe there is something wrong with me, that could be put right.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party

“No one can become really educated without having pursued some study in which he took no interest- for it is a part of education to learn to interest ourselves in subjects for which we have no aptitude.”
― T.S. Eliot

“We are being made aware that the organization of society on the principle of private profit, as well as public destruction, is leading both to the deformation of humanity by unregulated industrialism, and to the exhaustion of natural resources, and that a good deal of our material progress is a progress for which succeeding generations may have to pay dearly.”
― T.S. Eliot

“In spite of all the dishonour,
the broken standards, the broken lives,
The broken faith in one place or another,
There was something left that was more than the tales
Of old men on winter evenings.”
― T.S. Eliot, Collected Plays

“The journey not the arrival matters.”
― T.S. Eliot

“And I must borrow every changing shape
To find expression ... dance, dance
Like a dancing bear,
Cry like a parrot, chatter like an ape.
Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance”
― T.S. Eliot, Prufrock and Other Observations

“Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third.”
― T.S. Eliot

“There is no method but to be very intelligent.”
― T. S. Eliot

“and now you live dispersed on ribbon roads, And no man knows or cares who is his neighbor Unless his neighbor makes too much disturbance, But all dash to and fro in motor cars, Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere.”
― t.s. eliot

“He is haunted by a demon, a demon against which he feels powerless, because in its first manifestation it has no face, no name, nothing; and the words, the poem he makes, are a kind of exorcism of this demon.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Three Voices of Poetry

“In a world of fugitives, the person taking the opposite direction will appear to run away.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“Most contemporary novels are not really "written." They obtain what reality they have largely from an accurate rendering of the noises that human beings currently make in their daily simple needs of communication; and what part of a novel is not composed of these noises consists of a prose which is no more alive than that of a competent newspaper writer or government official. A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel-reader is not prepared to give.”
― T.S. Eliot

“We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds,... for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.”
― T.S. Eliot

“However you disguise it, this thing does not change:
The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.”
― T.S. Eliot

“The awful daring of a moment's surrender which an age of prudence
can never retract.
by this, and only this, we have existed.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

“We must remember that what a writer does to people is not necessarily what he intends to do. It may be only what people are capable of having done to them.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“I see the eyes but not the tears
This is my affliction.”
― T.S. Eliot