Thomas Stearns Eliot citáty

strana 6

„Lidstvo nedokáže snášet krutou realitu.“

„Dělat užitečnou věc, říkat odvážnou věc, přemýšlet o krásné věci: to stačí pro život jednoho člověka.“

„Někdy se věci stanou možnými, pokud je dostatečně chceme.“

„Samotná existence knihoven poskytuje nejlepší důkaz, že ještě můžeme mít naději pro budoucnost člověka.“

„Většinu zla na tomto světě páchají lidé s dobrými úmysly.“

„Rány v srdci, i když se časem zahojí, jsou na člověku po celý život znatelné.“

„Životu se lze vyhnout, smrti však ne.“

„Světlo, viditelná upomínka na neviditelné světlo.“

„Když nepřesáhneš sám sebe, odkud zjistíš, jak jsi vysoký?“

„Lidstvo nesnese příliš mnoho reality.“

„Milovat se s ženou v duchu je to nejideálnější milostné spojení dvou vyhraněných individualit.“

„Pohlavní vzdechy jsou součástí nesmrtelných myšlenek.“

„Nesmíme přestat hledat. Na konci našeho hledání dospějeme tam, kde jsme začínali, a bude to, jako kdybychom tam byli poprvé.“

„Někdy se věci, které šíleně chceme, stanou možnými.“

„Já ho nečtu, na to ho mám příliš rád.“

„Nezralí básníci napodobují, zralí básníci kradou.“

„Organizace je právě tak nutná jako inspirace.“

„Nezralí básníci napodobují, zkušení kradou. Ti špatní znetvoří, co si vezmou, zatímco dobří z toho udělají něco lepšího, nebo alespoň jiného. Skutečný básník zvládne svou kořist naroubovat do jedinečné koruny pocitů, zcela odlišné od té, ze které si svůj roub uštípl.“

„Dokud hudba trvá, jste hudbou vy.“

„Pokud toho nemáš až nad hlavu, jak vlastně víš, jak vysoký jsi?“

„Pravá poezie dokáže komunikovat dříve, než je pochopena.“

„Ukážu ti strach v hrsti prachu.“

„Svět se točí a svět se mění, ale jedna věc se nemění. Jedna věc se za všechna ta léta nezměnila. Ať už to maskujete jakkoli, tato věc se nemění: věčný boj Dobra a Zla.“

“I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.”

“I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison.”

“For he will do
As he do do
And there's no doing anything about it!”

“Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third.”

“Our emotions
Are only “incidents”
In the effort to keep day and night together.”

“Fading, fading: strength beyond hope and despair climbing the third stair. Lord, I am not worthy Lord, I am not worthy but speak the word only.”

“All time is unreedemable.”

“But the Church cannot be, in any political sense, either conservative or liberal, or revolutionary. Conservatism is too often conservation of the wrong things: liberalism a relaxation of discipline; revolution a denial of the permanent things.”

“Now that the lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room”

“And if all that is meaningless, I want to be cured
Of a craving for something I cannot find And of the shame of never finding it.”

“The poet's mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.”

“Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?'/Let us go and make our visit.”

“Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face”

“And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time”

“If we all were judged according to the consequences
Of all our words and deeds, beyond the intention
And beyond our limited understanding
Of ourselves and others, we should all be condemned.”

“Grishkin is nice: her
Russian eye is underlined for emphasis;
Uncorseted, her friendly bust
Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.”

“The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.”

“When the Stranger says: "What is the meaning of this city?
Do you huddle close together because you love each other?"
What will you answer? "We all dwell together
To make money from each other"? or "This is a community"?”

“Fortunate the man who, at the right moment meets the right friend; fortunate also the man who at the right moment meets the right enemy. I do not approve the extermination of the enemy; the policy of exterminating or, as it is barbarously said, liquidating enemies, is one of the most alarming developments of modern war and peace, from the point of view of those who desire the survival of culture. One needs the enemy… A country within which the divisions have goon too far is a danger to itself: a country which is too well united - whether by nature or by device, by hounest purpose or by fraud and oppression - is a menace to others.”

“The majority of mankind is lazy-minded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith; and when the ordinary man calls himself a sceptic or an unbeliever, that is ordinarily a simple pose, cloaking a disinclination to think anything out to a conclusion.”

“Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again”

“The soul of Man must quicken to creation.”

“Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.”

“Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.”

“In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.”

“O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.”

“Our age is an age of moderate virtue
And moderate vice”

“The broad-backed hippopotamus
Rests on his belly in the mud;
Although he seems so firm to us
He is merely flesh and blood.”

“O Light Invisible, we praise Thee!
Too bright for mortal vision.”