Quote #19

Yet if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following the ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its successes, 'tradition' should positively be discouraged. We have seen many such simple currents soon lost in the sand; and novelty is better than repetition. Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour.

More from Thomas Stearns Eliot

  1. We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet's difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate predecessors; we endeavour to find so…
  2. The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man t…
  3. I grow old ... I grow old ... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shal…
  4. Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature, will not find it preposterous that the past should…
  5. No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise t…
  6. Some one said: 'The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.' Precisely, and they are that which we know.
  7. It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: Would it have been worth whil…
  8. It is not the 'greatness,' the intensity, of the emotions, the components, but the intensity of the artistic process, the pressure, so to s…

All Thomas Stearns Eliot quotes