This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional.
~ T.S. Eliot

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The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new.
~ T.S. Eliot

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Do I dare disturb the universe?
~ T.S. Eliot

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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 set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead.
~ T.S. Eliot

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

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The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do more, and you are not yet decrepit enough to turn them down.
~ T.S. Eliot

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It is impossible to say just what I mean.
~ T.S. Eliot

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I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
~ T.S. Eliot

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There will be time, there will be time. To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.
~ T.S. Eliot

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The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence.
~ T.S. Eliot

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