There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.
T. S. EliotRead
The work of creation is never without travail.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Creation often involves struggle and hardship.
T. S. Eliot's quote highlights the idea that the process of creating anything worthwhile—be it art, literature, or any other form of expression—often comes with challenges and difficulties. This ‘travail’ is an essential part of the creative journey, suggesting that true creation cannot happen without embracing the struggles and efforts required to bring something beautiful or meaningful into existence.
Themes
CreationTravailStruggleArtEffort
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the artistic process, one could cite this quote to emphasize the difficulties artists face.
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.
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I am an Anglo-Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature and a royalist in politics.
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If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?
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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.
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In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
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In the olden days, everybody sang. You were expected to sing as well as talk. It was a mark of the cultured man to sing.
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I just genuinely feel that that's what you do when you're an artist: You stick up for the people around you.
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I don't think writers choose the genre, the genre chooses us. I wrote out of the wish to create order out of disorder, the liking of a pattern.
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I like to write about painting because I think visually. I see my writing as blocks of color before it forms itself. I think I also care about painting because I'm not musical. Painting to me is not a metaphor for writing, but something people do that can never be reduced to words.
A. S. ByattRead