FastSaying

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 no doubt an easy tool
Deferential glad to be of use
Politic cautious and meticulous
Full of high sentence but a bit obtuse
At times indeed almost ridiculous—
Almost at times the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind Do I dare to eat a peach
I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

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.


T.S. Eliot

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I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Sha...
T.S. ELIOT No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
...
T.S. ELIOT I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back T.S. ELIOT People are not an interruption of our business. People are our business.
A man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes.
It is hard to look up to a leader who keeps his ear to the ground.
The most wasted day of all is that in which we have not laughed.
The more intelligent a man is, the more originality he discovers in men. Ordinary people see no diff...
The intelligence is proved not by ease of learning, but by understanding what we learn.
Communication is something so simple and difficult that we can never put it in simple words.
Like threads of silver seen through crystal beads
Let love through good deeds show.
How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
In everyone's heart stirs a great homesickness.
That is the supreme value of history. The study of it is the best guarantee against repeating it.
Our wisdom comes usually from our experience, and our experience comes largely from our experience.
One thing about the school of experience is that it will repeat the lesson if you flunk the first ti...
To reprove small faults within due vehemence, is as absurd as if a man should take a great hammer to...
Faith is like electricity. You can't see it, but you can see the light.
Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it by the handle of anxiety, or by the handle of...
Some families can trace their ancestors back three hundred years, but can't tell you where their chi...
A recent survey was said to prove that the people we Americans most admire are our politicians and d...
If a man defrauds you one time, he is a rascal; if he does it twice, you are a fool.
Flattery looks like friendship, just like a wolf looks like a dog.
Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Courage is always greatest when blended with meekness; intellectual ability is most admired when it ...
Freedom also includes the right to mismanage your own affairs.
Let your friends be the friends of your deliberate choice.
The man who has strong opinions and always says what he thinks is courageous - and friendless.
Friendship is love with understanding.
So few people think. When we find one who really does, we call him a genius
Your life can't go according to plan if you have no plan.
Practicing the Golden Rule is not a sacrifice; it is an investment.
Conversation is an exercise of the mind; gossip is merely an exercise of the tongue.
An expert gossiper knows how much to leave out of a conversation
To live so that you would not be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip, is to have li...
Gossip is sometimes referred to as halitosis of the mind
If you would attain greatness, think no little thoughts.
We are born brave, trusting and greedy, and most of us remain greedy.
People are changed, not by coercion or intimidation, but by example.
Children are natural mimics; they act like their parents in spite of every effort to teach them good...
The guilty catch themselves.
Good habits are formed; bad habits we fall into.
If happiness could be brought, few of us could pay the price.
Happiness will never come to those who fail to appreciate what they already have.
Happiness is in the heart, not in the circumstances.
It's never too late to have a happy childhood.
Hatred is a boomerang which is sure to hit you harder than the one at whom you throw it.
Hate pollutes the mind.
If we miraculously became the people we hate, how lovable we would find ourselves.
To feel "fit as a fiddle" you must tone down your middle.
Our health always seems much more valuable after we lose it.
A patient going to a doctor for his first visit was asked, "And whom did you consult before coming t...
"Oh," replied his patient, with no malice aforethought, "he told me to come and see you."
It is impossible to make wisdom hereditary.
Honesty is a question of right or wrong, not a matter of policy.
It is a pleasure to give advice, humiliating to need it, normal to ignore it.
It is almost impossible to smile on the outside without feeling better on the inside.
Too many people confine their exercise to jumping to conclusions, running up bills, stretching the t...
Imagination was given man to compensate for what he is not, and a sense of humor to console him for ...
Humor - the perfect relationship of the parts to the whole.
Our five senses are incomplete without the sixth - a sense of humor.
"What made the deepest impression upon you?" inquired a friend one day of Lincoln, "when you stood i...
It isn't easy for an idea to squeeze itself into a head filled with prejudice.
Too many people run out of ideas long before they run out of words.
Imagination is the pontoon bridge making way for the timid feet of reason.
Practical observation commonly consists of collecting a few facts and loading them with guesses.
Friendship is a living thing that lasts only as long as it is nourished with kindness, empathy and u...
Having supplied them with names, omnipotence, justice, knowledge, Providence, - what are they?
A good laugh is sunshine in a house.
When you laugh, be sure to laugh at what people do and not at what people are.
One look around us ought to show that all our arbitrary measures and bounds have been clamped on us ...
No punishment of the unrighteous has ever been too severe in the eyes of the righteous.
Why keep on enacting laws when we already have more than we can break.
The best leader is the one who has the sense to surround himself with outstanding people and self-re...
Advice is the only commodity on the market where the supply always exceeds the demand.
Successful men follow the same advice they prescribe for others.
You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea
Old age may seem a long way off. But on the day it doesn't, it will be too late to do anything about...
Age withers only the outside.
Where ambition ends happiness begins.
The best answer to answer to anger is silence.
The size of a man is measured by the size of the thing that makes him angry.
A lot of good arguments are spoiled by some fool who knows what he is talking about.
People who know the least always argue the most.
If you look for the positive things in life; you will find them.
What we are doing at the moment is more that just one thing added to the rest; it is a memoir.
Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes
The human mind must believe in something, so why not let it believe what it does believe.
He that boasts of his own knowledge proclaims his ignorance
It is better to live richly than to die rich.
On his examination paper a boy wrote, "A natural death is where you die by yourself without a doctor...
Many things are worse than defeat,and compromise with evil is one of them.
Desire for security keeps littleness little and threatens the great with smallness.
We cannot be too earnest, too persistent, too determined, about living superior to the herd-instinct...
A college education never hurt anybody who was willing to learn after he got it.
Shortchange your education now and you may be short of change the rest of your life.
Mistakes are a great educator when one is honest enough to admit them and willing to learn from them
Catch your people doing something right and let them know you appreciate it.
Create the kind of climate in your organization where personal growth is expected, recognized and re...
Enthusiasm is very good lubrication for the mind.

More T.S. Eliot

My mind may be American but my heart is British.
T.S. ELIOT Distracted from distraction by distraction
T.S. ELIOT For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice...
T.S. ELIOT What is hell? Hell is oneself.
Hell is alone, the other figures in it
Merely projections...
T.S. ELIOT Unreal friendship may turn to real
But real friendship, once ended, cannot be mended
T.S. ELIOT ...the mind is conscious, but conscious of nothing - I said to my soul, be still, and wait without h...
T.S. ELIOT The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.
T.S. ELIOT We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we star...
T.S. ELIOT To approach the stranger is to invite the unexpected, release a new force, let the genie out of the ...
T.S. ELIOT My life is light, waiting for the death wind, Like a feather on the back of my hand.
T.S. ELIOT I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
T.S. ELIOT For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice.
T.S. ELIOT An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolong...
T.S. ELIOT Love is most nearly itself when here and now cease to matter.
T.S. ELIOT The most important thing for poets to do is to write as little as possible.
T.S. ELIOT Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is th...
T.S. ELIOT Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
T.S. ELIOT What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.
T.S. ELIOT There is nothing that will kill a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself.
T.S. ELIOT In my end is my beginning.
T.S. ELIOT What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is w...
T.S. ELIOT Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity
T.S. ELIOT Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.
T.S. ELIOT No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
...
T.S. ELIOT The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.
T.S. ELIOT There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.
T.S. ELIOT If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?
T.S. ELIOT Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
T.S. ELIOT I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait ...
T.S. ELIOT April is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desir...
T.S. ELIOT These fragments I have shored against my ruins
T.S. ELIOT Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisi...
T.S. ELIOT Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee, T.S. ELIOT We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive whe...
T.S. ELIOT Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.
T.S. ELIOT Pray for us now and at the hour of our birth.
T.S. ELIOT What we know of other people's only our memory of the moments during which we knew them.
T.S. ELIOT It is impossible to design a system so perfect that no one needs to be good.
T.S. ELIOT There's no vocabulary For love within a family, love that's lived in But not looked at, love within ...
T.S. ELIOT There is one order of beauty which seems made to turn heads. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or...
T.S. ELIOT Most of us who turn to any subject we love remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a hi...
T.S. ELIOT Here, said she, / Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor.
T.S. ELIOT I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different.
T.S. ELIOT One of the low on whom assurance sits / As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
T.S. ELIOT I grow old . . . I grow old . . . / I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
T.S. ELIOT Where is wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
T.S. ELIOT I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
T.S. ELIOT War is not a life: it is a situation, one which may neither be ignored nor accepted.
T.S. ELIOT Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.
T.S. ELIOT It's strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lov...
T.S. ELIOT April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirrin...
T.S. ELIOT For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
T.S. ELIOT No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; / Am an attendant lord.
T.S. ELIOT To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is eno...
T.S. ELIOT So far as we are human, what we do must be either evil or good: so far as we do evil or good, we are...
T.S. ELIOT For I have known them all already, know them all -- have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I...
T.S. ELIOT I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
T.S. ELIOT And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, / And in short, I was afraid.
T.S. ELIOT It's not wise to violate the rules until you know how to observe them.
T.S. ELIOT Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of pe...
T.S. ELIOT The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future o...
T.S. ELIOT No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.
T.S. ELIOT So I find words I never thought to speak

In streets I never thought I should revisit
T.S. ELIOT Those who glitter with the glory of the hummingbird meaning death
T.S. ELIOT And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And a hundred visions and revisions
T.S. ELIOT Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance
T.S. ELIOT I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to m...
T.S. ELIOT This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
T.S. ELIOT Playwriting gets into your blood and you can't stop it. At least not until the producers or the publ...
T.S. ELIOT In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in.
T.S. ELIOT that which is only living
Can only die
T.S. ELIOT What was to be the value of the long looked forward to,
Long hoped for calm, the autumnal seren...
T.S. ELIOT Time present and time past / are both perhaps present in time future.
T.S. ELIOT I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; ...
T.S. ELIOT At the still point, there the dance is.
T.S. ELIOT What the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication<...
T.S. ELIOT I do not know much about gods;but I think that the river is a strong brown god-sullen, untamed and i...
T.S. ELIOT Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, every poem an epitaph.
T.S. ELIOT Or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the musi...
T.S. ELIOT A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
T.S. ELIOT All time is unreedemable.
T.S. ELIOT You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it...
T.S. ELIOT Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear...
T.S. ELIOT The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.
T.S. ELIOT There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same h...
T.S. ELIOT The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presenc...
T.S. ELIOT Only through time time is conquered
T.S. ELIOT I am glad you have a Cat, but I do not believe it is So remarkable a cat as My Cat.
T.S. ELIOT time past and time future
what might have been and what has been
point to one end, which i...
T.S. ELIOT We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive whe...
T.S. ELIOT So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years-
Twenty years largely wasted, the year...
T.S. ELIOT The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues ...
T.S. ELIOT Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contain...
T.S. ELIOT Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
T.S. ELIOT Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, in...
T.S. ELIOT Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
T.S. ELIOT If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter
T.S. ELIOT You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends, and how, how rare and strange it is, to find i...
T.S. ELIOT My name is only an anagram of toilets.
T.S. ELIOT For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice....
T.S. ELIOT The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne, / Glowed on the marble.
T.S. ELIOT When we read of human beings behaving in certain ways, with the approval of the author, who gives hi...
T.S. ELIOT What do we live for; if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?
T.S. ELIOT This love is silent.
T.S. ELIOT Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form ...
T.S. ELIOT You are the music while the music lasts.
T.S. ELIOT If you haven't the strength to impose your own terms upon life, you must accept the terms it offers ...
T.S. ELIOT The winter evening settles down / With smell of steaks in passage ways.
T.S. ELIOT Keep true, never be ashamed of doing right; decide on what you think is right and stick to it.
T.S. ELIOT Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.
T.S. ELIOT Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs, rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys, adv...
T.S. ELIOT The river is within us, the sea is all about us; The sea is the land's edge also
T.S. ELIOT When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our se...
T.S. ELIOT Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair.
T.S. ELIOT Footfalls echo in the memory, Down the passage which we did not take, Towards the door we never open...
T.S. ELIOT Let's not be narrow, nasty, and negative.
T.S. ELIOT Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of pe...
T.S. ELIOT In my beginning is my end.
T.S. ELIOT Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
T.S. ELIOT Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
T.S. ELIOT It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the 'dear dece...
T.S. ELIOT Donne, I suppose, was such another / Who found no substitute for sense. / To seize and clutch and pe...
T.S. ELIOT What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
T.S. ELIOT I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids/Sprouting despondently at area gates.
T.S. ELIOT Not fare well, / But fare forward, voyagers.
T.S. ELIOT The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and ye...
T.S. ELIOT The wounded surgeon plies the steel / That questions the distempered part.
T.S. ELIOT We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none t...
T.S. ELIOT The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.
T.S. ELIOT Between the idea / And the reality / Between the motion / And the act / Falls the Shadow.
T.S. ELIOT And I will show you something different from either your shadow at morning striding behind you or yo...
T.S. ELIOT I do not approve the extermination of the enemy; the policy of exterminating or, as it is barbarousl...
T.S. ELIOT Radio is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at th...
T.S. ELIOT After the erection of the Chinese Wall of Milton, blank verse has suffered not only arrest but retro...
T.S. ELIOT At the first turning of the second stair / I turned and saw below / The same shape twisted on the ba...
T.S. ELIOT The dove descending breaks the air / With flame of incandescent terror.
T.S. ELIOT People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events.
T.S. ELIOT Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mea...
T.S. ELIOT If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it ...
T.S. ELIOT But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will...
T.S. ELIOT He's outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)
And his footprints are not found in ...
T.S. ELIOT Gus is the Cat at the Theatre Door.
His name, as I ought to have told you before,
Is reall...
T.S. ELIOT With Cats, some say, one rule is true:
Don’t speak till you are spoken to.
Myself, I do ...
T.S. ELIOT Before a Cat will condescend
To treat you as a trusted friend,
Some little token of esteem...
T.S. ELIOT The Pekes and the Pollicles, everyone knows,
Are proud and implacable, passionate foes;
I...
T.S. ELIOT The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may...
T.S. ELIOT The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
T.S. ELIOT And we must think no further of you.
T.S. ELIOT We are being made aware that the organization of society on the principle of private profit, as well...
T.S. ELIOT The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we li...
T.S. ELIOT Unreal City, / Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, / A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, /...
T.S. ELIOT If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unsp...
T.S. ELIOT For he will do
As he do do
And there's no doing anything about it!
T.S. ELIOT To country people Cows are mild,
And flee from any stick they throw;
But I’m a timid tow...
T.S. ELIOT We have only to conquer
Now, by suffering. This is the easier victory.
Now is the triumph...
T.S. ELIOT Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke ...
T.S. ELIOT One error, in fact, of eccentricity in poetry is to seek for new human emotions to express; and in t...
T.S. ELIOT The one thing you can do is to do nothing. Wait . . . You will find that you survive humiliation and...
T.S. ELIOT Each venture is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate with shabby equipment always deteriorati...
T.S. ELIOT Clear the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! take stone from stone and wash them.
T.S. ELIOT I like not only to be loved, but to be told I am loved.
T.S. ELIOT Any poet, if he is to survive beyond his 25th year, must alter; he must seek new literary influences...
T.S. ELIOT Ash on an old man's sleeve / Is all the ash the burnt roses leave, / Dust in the air suspended / Mar...
T.S. ELIOT The majority of poems one outgrows and outlives, as one outgrows and outlives the majority of human ...
T.S. ELIOT My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measu...
T.S. ELIOT Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.
T.S. ELIOT The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to ...
T.S. ELIOT A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
T.S. ELIOT All cases are unique and very similar to others.
T.S. ELIOT We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and ...
T.S. ELIOT When lovely woman stoops to folly and / Paces about her room again, alone, / She smoothes her hair w...
T.S. ELIOT The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the windowpanes.
T.S. ELIOT We do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test o...
T.S. ELIOT Human kind cannot bear much reality.
T.S. ELIOT If you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human being ca...
T.S. ELIOT In the vain laughter of folly, wisdom hears half its applause.
T.S. ELIOT To hear the latest Pole / transmit the Preludes, through his hair and fingertips.
T.S. ELIOT Friendship should be more than biting time can sever.
T.S. ELIOT That corpse you planted last year in your garden, / Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
T.S. ELIOT Whatever you do, don't whimper, but take the consequences.
T.S. ELIOT No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.
T.S. ELIOT Only by acceptance of the past, can you alter it.
T.S. ELIOT I said to my soul be still, and wait without hope; for hope would be hope of the wrong thing; wait w...
T.S. ELIOT When a Cat adopts you there is nothing to be done about it except put up with it until the wind chan...
T.S. ELIOT The highest form of treason: to do the right thing for the wrong reason. Murder in the Cathedral
T.S. ELIOT Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important.
T.S. ELIOT Webster was much possessed by death / And saw the skull beneath the skin.
T.S. ELIOT I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is fa...
T.S. ELIOT The Nobel is a ticket to one's own funeral. No one has ever done anything after he got it.
T.S. ELIOT There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.
T.S. ELIOT When one wanted one's interests looking after whatever the cost, it was not so well for a lawyer to ...
T.S. ELIOT For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afterno...
T.S. ELIOT Do I dare Disturb the universe?
T.S. ELIOT We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with s...
T.S. ELIOT Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
T.S. ELIOT There is shadow under this red rock // (Come in under the shadow of this red rock) // And I will sho...
T.S. ELIOT Someone said, 'The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.' Prec...
T.S. ELIOT We understand the ordinary business of living,
We know how to work the machine
T.S. ELIOT Oxford is very pretty, but I don't like to be dead.
T.S. ELIOT It is certain that a book is not harmless merely because no one is consciously offended by it.
T.S. ELIOT