T. S. Eliot

“I am glad you have a Cat, but I do not believe it is So remarkable a cat as My Cat. My Cat is a Lilliecat Hubvously. What a lilliecat it is. There never was such a Lilliecat. Its Name is Jellyorum and its one Idea is to be Useful!! Letter to his godson, Thomas Erle Faber”

“It is a test (a positive test, I do not assert that it is always valid negatively), that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood. "Dante" (1929), in Selected Essays (1932), p. 238”

“My general point of view may be described as classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and Anglo”

“... were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death. "Journey of the Magi”

“There were times we regretted The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, And the silken girls bringing sherbet. "Journey of the Magi”

“Journey of the Magi”

“A dangerous person to disagree with. On Samuel Johnson , in Homage to John Dryden: Three Essays on Poetry of the Seventeenth Century”

“The Contemporary English Novelist”

“Atheism should always be encouraged (i.e. rationalistic not emotional atheism) for the sake of the Faith. Letter to Richard Aldington”

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. " Philip Massinger ", a biographical essay, in The Sacred Wood”