“The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living.”
More from T. S. Eliot
“There will be time, there will be time, to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.”
“Combing the white hair of the waves blown back, when the wind blows the water white and…”
“Do I dare disturb the universe?”
“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”