There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.
Our emotions Are only “incidents” In the effort to keep day and night together.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that our emotions are transient events in the broader context of life, which is a continuous cycle of day and night.
T. S. Eliot's quote reflects the philosophical idea that emotions are fleeting and serve as mere 'incidents' in our journey through life. He likens life to the day-night cycle, emphasizing that while emotions may rise and fall like the sun and moon, they are part of a larger, ongoing experience. This perspective invites us to view our feelings with a sense of detachment, understanding that they contribute to the overall rhythm of existence rather than define it.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech on emotional resilience, one might quote this to illustrate the temporary nature of feelings.
More from T. S. Eliot
All quotes →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.
I am an Anglo-Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature and a royalist in politics.
If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?
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.
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
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No free people ever existed, or can ever exist, without keeping the purse strings in their own hands. Where this is the case, they have a constitutional check upon the administration, which may thereby by brought into order without violence. But when such a power is not lodged in the people, oppression proceeds uncontrolled in its career, till the governed, transported into rage, seek redress in the midst of blood and confusion.
This much I can say with definiteness - namely, that there is no scientific basis for the denial of religion - nor is there in my judgment any excuse for a conflict between science and religion, for their fields are entirely different. Men who know very little of science and men who know very little of religion do indeed get to quarreling, and the onlookers imagine that there is a conflict between science and religion, whereas the conflict is only between two different species of ignorance.
Belief in God? An afterlife? I believe in rock: this apodictic rock beneath my feet.
INADMISSIBLE- Not competent to be considered. Hearsay evidence is inadmissible ... but there is no religion in the world that has any other basis than hearsay evidence.
Every second that passes is like a door that opens to allow in what has not yet happened, what we call the future, but, to challenge the contradictory nature of what we have just said, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the future is just an immense void, that the future is just the time on which the eternal present feeds.