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

— T.S. Eliot

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

— T.S. Eliot

Gus is the Cat at the Theatre Door. His name, as I ought to have told you before, Is really Asparagus. That's such a fuss To pronounce, that we usually call him just Gus. His coat's very shabby, he's thin as a rake, And he suffers from palsy that makes his paw shake. Yet he was, in his youth, quite the smartest of Cats —But no longer a terror to mice or to rats. For he isn't the Cat that he was in his prime;Though his name was quite famous, he says, in his time. And whenever he joins his friends at their club (which takes place at the back of the neighboring pub)He loves to regale them, if someone else pays, With anecdotes drawn from his palmiest days. For he once was a Star of the highest degree —He has acted with Irving, he's acted with Tree. And he likes to relate his success on the Halls, Where the Gallery once gave him seven cat-calls. But his grandest creation, as he loves to tell, Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.

— T.S. Eliot

He is quiet and small, he is black From his ears to the tip of his tail;He can creep through the tiniest crackle can walk on the narrowest rail. He can pick any card from a pack, He is equally cunning with dice;He is always deceiving you into believing That he's only hunting for mice. He can play any trick with a corker a spoon and a bit of fish-paste;If you look for a knife or a fork And you think it is merely misplaced -You have seen it one moment, and then it is gain! But you'll find it next week lying out on the lawn. And we all say: OH! Well I never! Was there every Cat so clever As Magical Mr. Mistoffelees!

— T.S. Eliot

He's outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.) And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard's. And when the larder's looted, or the jewel-case is rifled, Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke's been stifled, Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair -A, there's the wonder of the thing! Macavity's not there! And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty's gone astray, Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way, There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair -But it's useless to investigate -M cavity's not there! And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:'It must have been Macavity!' - but he's a mile away. You'll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs, Or engaged in doing complicated long-division sums. Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity, There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity. He always has an alibi, and one or two to Speyer:At whatever time the deed took place - CAVITY WASN'T THERE! And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddle bone)Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!

— T.S. Eliot

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

— T.S. Eliot

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

— T.S. Eliot

I am alive to a usual objection to what is clearly part of my program for the métier of poetry. The objection is that the doctrine requires a ridiculous amount of erudition (pedantry), a claim which can be rejected by appeal to the lives of poets in any pantheon. It will even be affirmed that much learning deadens or perverts poetic sensibility. While, however, we persist in believing that a poet ought to know as much as will not encroach upon his necessary receptivity and necessary laziness, it is not desirable to confine knowledge to whatever can be put into a useful shape for examinations, drawing rooms, or the still more pretentious modes of publicity. Some can absorb knowledge, the more tardy must sweat for it. Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum. What is to be insisted upon is that the poet must develop this consciousness throughout his career. What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

— T.S. Eliot

I don't know much about gods, but I think the river is a strong, brown god

— T.S. Eliot

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent If the unheard, unspoken Word is unspoken, unheard;Still is the spoken word, the Word unheard, The Word without a word, the Word within The world and for the world;And the light shone in the darkness and Against the Word the instilled world still whirled About the center of the silent Word. Oh my people, what have I done unto thee. Where shall the word be found, where shall the word Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence

— T.S. Eliot