"Our attempts at writing were our own affair; our love of writing expressed itself not through our preoccupations with our own work, but through our readings of literature."

"It takes application, and a kind of genius, to believe anything, and to believe anything (I do not mean merely to believe in some “religion”) will probably become more and more difficult as time goes on."

"(Arnold and Eliot had studied the Gita closely.) The penultimate sentence of “Tradition and the Individual Talent” is a rephrasing of, and (very much in the manner that Eliot was developing in his poetry) almost a direct quotation from, the Gita:"

"“And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done.”"

"“Human kind cannot bear very much reality,” yes; but “reality” is also the “practicality” of what we know and what comprises our world—the two sharp knocks on the table."