50 Important Quotes You Should Pay Attention to in Poetry by TS Eliot

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Life and Death quotes in Poetry by TS Eliot

#11: “S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse…Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.”

• Poem: “The Hollow Men” (1925)
• Techniques: Extract, allusion

#12: “I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.”

• Poem: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915)
• Techniques: Metaphor, imagery

#13: “The last twist of the knife.”

• Poem: “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” (1911)
• Techniques: Metaphor, imagery, allusion

#14: “This is the dead land / This is the cactus land.”

• Poem: “The Hollow Men” (1925)
• Techniques: Imagery, polysyndeton

#15: “The eyes are not here / There are no eyes here / In this valley of dying stars / In this hollow valley / This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms”

• Poem: “The Hollow Men” (1925)
• Techniques: Synecdoche, allusion, metaphor

#16: “And three trees on the low sky, / And an old white horse…Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver”

• Poem: “Journey of the Magi” (1927)
• Techniques: Allusions, symbolism, portents

#17: “Every street lamp that I pass / Beats like a fatalistic drum”

• Poem: “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” (1911)
• Techniques: Simile, synaesthesia

#18: “death’s dream kingdom” and “death’s other Kingdom”.

• Poem: “The Hollow Men” (1925)
• Techniques: Repetition, (Biblical) allusion, metaphor

#19: “I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, / And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, / And in short, I was afraid.”

• Poem: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915)
• Techniques: Allusion, diction, metaphor

#20: “Shape without form, shade without colour, / Paralysed force, gesture without motion”

• Poem: “The Hollow Men” (1925)
• Techniques: Oxymoron, rhetoric

Disillusionment and Loss of Spirituality

幻灭智慧h modernity/urban life

# 21:“在日落和天井sprinkled streets, / After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor -”

• Poem: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915)
• Techniques: Sibilance, polysyndeton, synecdoche

#22: “sordid images / Of which your soul was constituted”

• Poem: “Preludes” (1917)
• Techniques: Metaphor, diction, imagery

#23: “I could see nothing behind that child’s eye.”

• Poem: “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” (1911)
• Techniques: Metaphor, allegory

#24: “To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet”

• Poem: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915)
• Techniques: Synecdoche, metaphor

#25: “The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall, / Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life”

• Poem: “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” (1911)
• Techniques: Tricolon, metaphor, allegory

#26: “I should be glad of another death”

• Poem: “Journey of the Magi” (1927)
• 技术:比喻,矛盾

#27: “And running away”; “And the night-fires going out”;“And the cities hostile”;“And the villages dirty”

• Poem: “Journey of the Magi” (1927)
• Techniques: Polysyndeton, imagery

#28: “And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory… / we regretted / The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, / And the silken girls bringing sherbet.”

• Poem: “Journey of the Magi” (1927)
• Techniques: Diction, polysyndeton, juxtaposition

#29: “She winks a feeble eye”

• Poem: “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” (1911)
• Techniques: Personification, imagery

#30: “And would it have been worth it, after all, / After the cups, the marmalade, the tea”

• Poem: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915)
• Techniques: Rhetorical question, tricolon

#31: “One thinks of all the hands / That are raising dingy shades / In a thousand furnished rooms”

• Poem: “Preludes” (1917)
• Techniques: synecdoche, hyperbole, imagery

#32: “But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen”

• Poem: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915)
• Techniques: Metaphor, imagery

#33: “Smells of chestnuts in the streets, / And female smells in shuttered rooms, / And cigarettes in corridors / And cocktail smells in bars.”

• Poem: “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” (1911)
• Techniques: (olfactory) Imagery, polysyndeton

Loss of Spirituality

#34: “For Thine is / Life is / For Thine is the”

• Poem: “The Hollow Men” (1925)
• Techniques: Tercet, biblical allusion, polysyndeton

#35: “The eyes are not here / There are no eyes here / In this valley of dying stars / In this hollow valley / This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms”

• Poem: “The Hollow Men” (1925)
• Techniques: Synecdoche, repetition, metaphor

#36: “Lips that would kiss / Form prayers to broken stone.”

• Poem: “The Hollow Men” (1925)
• Techniques: Oxymoron, allusion

#37: “this Birth was / Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death”

• Poem: “Journey of the Magi” (1927)
• Techniques: Biblical allusion, metaphor, juxtaposition

#38: “alien people clutching their gods”

• Poem: “Journey of the Magi” (1927)
• Techniques: Allusion, metaphor

#39: “Under the twinkle of a fading star”

• Poem: “The Hollow Men” (1925)
• Techniques: Biblical allusion, imagery

#40: “I am moved by fancies that are curled / Around these images”

• Poem: “Preludes” (1917)
• Techniques: Metafiction, metaphor

Quotes about Time in Poetry by TS Eliot

#41: Repeated refrain of time signatures in “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” – “Twelve o’clock.”; “Half past one.”

• Poem: “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” (1911)
• Techniques: Repetition, signposting

#42: “Do I dare / Disturb the universe? / In a minute there is time / For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.”

• Poem: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915)
• Techniques: Oxymoron, rhetorical question

#43: “There will be time, there will be time…Time for you and time for me, / And time yet for a hundred indecisions, / And for a hundred visions and revisions, / Before the taking of a toast and tea.”

• Poem: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915)
• Techniques: Repetition, oxymoron, metaphor

#44: “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”

• Poem: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915).
• Techniques: Tricolon, metaphor.

#45: “Between the idea / And the reality / Between the motion / And the act / Falls the Shadow”

• Poem: “The Hollow Men” (1925)
• Techniques: Oxymoron, allusion

#46: “At four and five and six o’clock”

• Poem: “Preludes” (1917)
• Techniques: Rhythm, tricolon, allusion (urban commuter times, mundanity of life)

#47: “A cold coming we had of it…we regretted / The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces”

• Poem: “Journey of the Magi” (1927)
• Techniques: Metaphor (for Romanticism vs. Modernism), juxtaposition

#48: “Held in a lunar synthesis, / Whispering lunar incantations / Dissolve the floors of memory”

• Poem: “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” (1911)
• Techniques: Repetition, metaphor, allusion (cyclical time)

#49: “The moon has lost her memory…She is alone / With all the old nocturnal smells / That cross and cross across her brain”

• Poem: “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” (1911)
• Techniques: Assonance, metaphor, allusion

#50: “And how should I begin?”

• Poem: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915)
• Techniques: rhetorical question, irony (question comes halfway through the poem)