In a world of fugitives, the person taking the opposite direction will appear to run away.

Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance

You will find that you survive humiliation. And that's an experience of incalculable value.

We fight to keep something alive rather than in the expectation that anything will triumph.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other Who think the same thoughts without need of speech

There is one who remembers the way to your door: Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.

As we grow older, the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated of dead and living.

There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.

Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.

The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

We do not pass twice through the same door Or return to the door through which we did not pass.

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope, For hope would be hope for the wrong thing.

music heard so deeply That it is not heard at all, but you are the music While the music lasts.

For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice.

If one has to earn a living, therefore, the safest occupation is that most remote from the arts.

Between the conception and the creation, between the emotion and the response, Falls the shadow.

And through the spaces of the dark Midnight shakes the memory As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

We can say of Shakespeare, that never has a man turned so little knowledge to such great account.

There is, it seems to us, At best, only a limited value In the knowledge derived from experience.

Time past and time future allow but a little consciousness. To be conscious is not to be in time.

The Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying within and attacked from without.

A people without history Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern Of timeless moments.

Not the intense moment Isolated, with no before and after, But a lifetime burning in every moment.

Envy is everywhere. Who is without envy? And most people Are unaware or unashamed of being envious.

There is no absolute point of view from which real and ideal can be finally separated and labelled.

Men have left GOD not for other gods, they say, but for no God; and this has never happened before.

If we really want to pray we must first learn to listen, for in the silence of the heart God speaks.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word / Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.

Writing every day is a way of keeping the engine running, and then something good may come out of it.

The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence

The only hope, or else despair Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre - To be redeemed from fire by fire.

When comparing works of art, it is important that the art itself, and not the artists, be considered.

If you will not have God (and He is a jealous God), you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin.

An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better.

Here were decent godless people; Their only monument the asphalt road And a thousand lost golf balls.

When a great poet has lived, certain things have been done once for all, and cannot be achieved again.

Today, you're halfway to 100! Here's to optimism, whether it is realistic or not. Happy 50th birthday!

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark, The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant

We ask only to be reassured About the noises in the cellar And the window that should not have been open

Upon the glazen shelves kept watch Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith The army of unalterable law.

The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man

Neither way is better. / Both ways are necessary. / It is also necessary / To make a choice between them.

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair- Lean on a garden urn- Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity, there never was a cat of such deceitfulness and sauvity.

A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.

To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not / You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.

time past and time future what might have been and what has been point to one end, which is always present.

I say to you: Make perfect your will. / I say: take no thought of the harvest, / But only of proper sowing.

In a mind charged with an eager purpose and an unfinished vindictiveness, there is no room for new feelings.

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