So I find words I never thought to speakIn streets I never thought I should revisitWhen I left my body on a distant shore.

Old Deuteronomy’s lived a long time; He’s a cat who has lived many lives in succession. He was famous in proverb and famous in rhyme a long while before Queen Victoria’s accession. Old Deuteronomy’s buried...

The dove descending breaks the air / With flame of incandescent terror.

Clear the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! take stone from stone and wash them.

Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair.

People exercise an unconscious selection in being influenced.

We are the hollow menWe are the stuffed menLeaning togetherHeadpiece filled with straw. Alas!Our dried voices, whenWe whisper togetherAre quiet and meaninglessAs wind in dry grassOr rats’ feet over broken glassIn our dry cellarShape without...

In this brief transit where the dreams crossThe dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these thingsFrom the wide window towards the granite shoreThe white sails still...

Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.

There are three conditions which often look alikeYet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachmentFrom self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them,...

All cases are unique and very similar to others.

It’s strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words.

The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

It’s not wise to violate rules until you know how to observe them.

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

…to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.

Most of us who turn to any subject we love remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untried volume, or sat with parted lips listening...

There are flood and drought over the eyes and in the mouth, dead water and dead sand contending for the upper hand. The parched eviscerate soil gapes at the vanity of toil, laughs without mirth....

My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.

Plainness has its peculiar temptations quite as much as beauty.

If we take the widest and wisest view of a Cause, there is no such thing as a Lost Cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause. We fight for lost causes...

For I have known them all already, known them all—Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must...

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

The Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat:If you offer him pheasant he would rather have grouse.If you put him in a house he would much prefer a flat,If you put him in a flat...

When a Cat adopts you there is nothing to be done about it except put up with it until the wind changes.

You are the music while the music lasts.

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 when we read a book and feel an emotion...

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information.

We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.

Poetry, if it is not to be a lifeless repetition of forms, must be constantly exploring “the frontiers of the spirit.” But these frontiers are not like the surveys of geographical explorers, conquered once for...

We ask only to be reassuredAbout the noises in the cellarAnd the window that should not have been open

The dove descending breaks the airWith flame of incandescent terrorOf which the tongues declareThe one discharge from sin and error.The only hope, or else despairLies in the choice of pyre or pyre-To be redeemed from...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

So the lover must struggle for words.

Business today consists in persuading crowds.

Footfalls echo in the memory down the passage which we did not take towards the door we never opened into the rose-garden.

This is the way the world endsNot with a bang but a whimper.

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

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...

Friendship should be more than biting time can sever.

Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.

After the erection of the Chinese Wall of Milton, blank verse has suffered not only arrest but retrogression.

For every life and every act consequence of good and evil can be shown and as in time results of many deeds are blended so good and evil in the end become confounded.

A condition of complete simplicity(Costing not less than everything)

There will be time, there will be timeTo prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.

You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,And how, how rare and strange it is, to findIn a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,(For indeed I do...

This is a community”?Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.

He is quiet and small, he is blackFrom his ears to the tip of his tail;He can creep through the tiniest crackHe can walk on the narrowest rail.He can pick any card from a pack,He...