Words, Thoughts, and Eliot Quotes

Nihilism: a belief that life is essentially meaningless and without purpose or value, accompanied by a rejection of all religious and moral principles.

Solipsism: philosophic view that the self is all that can be known to exist., that only one’s mind is sure to exist, and that the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist.

Existentialism: a philosophical movement that developed during the early part of the twentieth century but became influential and active during the decades following WWII. In response to the chaos and destruction caused by two successive world wars, and as an extension of modernism’s rejection of traditional values and conventions, existentialist philosophers and writers rejected the optimistic rationalist and empiricist doctrines that assume the universe is a determined, rational, and orderly system that is intelligible to contemplative observers who can use their reason to discover that its natural law and as a guide for human activity. Existentialists did not believe that the universe was reasonable or understandable. Existentialists generally believed that the general state of all individuals was one of alienation, disorientation, and confusion resulting from the confrontation with an absurd and meaningless world.

Existentialists believed that physical, material being took precedence over philosophical idealism or contemplation. Existence is basic, and an individual’s knowledge or self-awareness is developed through his or her actual experience, which is at best partial and fleeting. Existence cannot be viewed objectively or in abstraction; it can only be seen in terms of the impact that specific experiences make on an individual. No individual has a predetermined place or function within a rational, orderly system, and everyone is compelled to assume responsibility for making the choices in his or her life, although there are no guides for making these choices. Thus individuals are always in a state of anxiety (often referred to as angst) arising from the realization of their freedom of choice, of their ignorance of the future, of their awareness of its manifold possibilities, and the ultimate finiteness and meaninglessness of existence. Nothingness both precedes and follows existence.

Quotes from T. S. Eliot:

Objective correlative: “The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative,’ in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.” “Hamlet and His Problems”

“It appears likely that poets in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be difficult. Our civilization comprehends great variety and complexity, and this variety and complexity, playing upon a refined sensibility, must produce various and complex results. The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into his meaning.” “The Metaphysical Poets”

A play should give you something to think about. When I see a play and understand it the first time, then I know it can't be much good.

A toothache, or a violent passion, is not necessarily diminished by our knowledge of its causes, its character, its importance or insignificance.

All significant truths are private truths. As they become public they cease to become truths; they become facts, or at best, part of the public character; or at worst, catchwords.

And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness.

Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity.

Any poet, if he is to survive beyond his 25th year, must alter; he must seek new literary influences; he will have different emotions to express.

April is the cruellest month.

As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing. [mug:a stupid or gullible person]

Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself.

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them.

Home is where one starts from.

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

I don't believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates.

I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different.

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.