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.
T. S. EliotRead
If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?
T. S. EliotRead
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.
T. S. EliotRead
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
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Similar quotes
I'm not asking you to describe the rain falling the night the archangel arrived; I'm demanding that you get me wet. Make up your mind, Mr. Writer, and for once in your life be the flower that smells rather than the chronicler of the aroma. There's not much pleasure in writing what you live. The challenge is to live what you write.
Eduardo GaleanoRead
There are likewise three kinds of dancers: first, those who consider dancing as a sort of gymnastic drill, made up of impersonal and graceful arabesques; second, those who, by concentrating their minds, lead the body into the rhythm of a desired emotion, expressing a remembered feeling or experience. And finally, there are those who convert the body into a luminous fluidity, surrendering it to the inspiration of the soul.
Isadora DuncanRead
Give me a look, give me a face, That makes simplicity a grace Robes loosely flowing, hair as free Such sweet neglect more taketh me Than all the adulteries of art: They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.
Ben JonsonRead
The greatest poets are those with memories so great that they extend beyond their strongest experiences to their minutest observations of people and things far outside their own self-centeredness.
Stephen SpenderRead
A masterpiece of fiction is an original world and as such is not likely to fit the world of the reader.
Vladimir NabokovRead
On certain occasions art can shake very ordinary spirits, and whole worlds can be revealed by its clumsiest interpreters.
Gustave FlaubertRead