T. S. Eliot Quotes

Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.

Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy
but speak the word only.

In order to possess what you do not possess, you must go by the way of dispossession.

Liberty is a different kind of pain from prison.

Home is where one starts from.

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant

We had the experience, but we missed the meaning.

Humility is the most difficult of all virtues to achieve; nothing dies harder than the desire to think well of self.

Any religion is forever in danger of petrifaction into mere ritual and habit, though ritual and habit be essential to religion.

A national culture, if it is to flourish, should be a constellation of cultures, the constitutes of which, benefiting each other, benefit the whole.

The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre -
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

You are here to kneel.

We read many books, because we cannot know enough people.

A play should give you something to think about. When I see a play and understand it the first time, then I know it can't be much good.

Paint me the bold anfractuous rocks Faced by the snarled and yelping seas.

One starts an action simply because one must do something.

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom

Again I must remind you that a dog's a dog-a cat's a cat.

Someone 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.

I am glad you have a Cat, but I do not believe it is So remarkable a cat as My Cat.

In a mind charged with an eager purpose and an unfinished vindictiveness, there is no room for new feelings.

Bad poets imitate, good poets steal.

There is not a more repulsive spectacle than on old man who will not forsake the world, which has already forsaken him.

Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment.

The destination cannot be described; / You will know very little until you get there; / You will journey blind.

I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different.

This is the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating every word.

It is certain that a book is not harmless merely because no one is consciously offended by it.

Can we only love
Something created in our own imaginations?

The journey not the arrival matters.

It's not wise to violate the rules until you know how to observe them.

Truth on our level is a different thing from truth for the jellyfish.

The usual dog about the town is much inclined to play the clown.

In the mountains, there you feel free.

Honest criticism and sensible appreciation are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.

The circle of our understanding is a very restricted area.

Cling, swing, Spring, sing, Swing up into the apple tree.

We do not know until the shell breaks what kind of egg we have been sitting on.

Turning Wearily, as one would turn to nod goodbye to Rochefoucauld, If the street were time and he as the end of the street.

These are only hints an guesses ... the rest is prayer, observance, discipline, thought, and action.

Now that the lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room

The most important thing for poets to do is to write as little as possible.

When comparing works of art, it is important that the art itself, and not the artists, be considered.

There is no such thing as a lost cause, because there is no such thing as a gained cause

The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse

Gin and drugs, dear lady, gin and drugs.

Each day a raid on the inarticulate--T.S. Eliot

that which is only living
Can only die

For history is a pattern Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel History is now and England.

The chief danger about Paris is that it is such a strong stimulant.

Do I dare Disturb the universe?

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in infomation?

You must not on any account give me credit for being penetrating. I have impressed people that way before, and the result is always disaster.

I can show you fear in a handful of dust

I suspect that in our loathing of totalitarianism, there is infused a good deal of admiration for its efficiency.

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

life is long between the desire and the spasm.

In the last few years everything I'd done up to sixty or so has seemed very childish.

The fool,fixed in his folly,may think He can turn the wheel on which he turns.

A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments.

The Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying within and attacked from without.

Accident is design / And design is accident / In a cloud of unknowing.

All time is unreedemable.

Redeem the time. Redeem the unread vision of a higher dream ...

The end is in the beginning.

If you want it you must obtain it by great labor.

There is nothing at all to be done about it, There is nothing to do about anything.

Heretic ... is a person who seizes upon a truth and pushes it to the point at which it becomes a falsehood.

It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the 'dear deceit' of beauty.

It is only in the world of objects that we have time and space and selves.

Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other
Who think the same thoughts without need of speech

I should have been a pair of ragged claws/ Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

The great ages did not contain the best talent, they wasted less.

The still point in a turning world.

There will be time to murder and create.

I must say Bernard Shaw is greatly improved by music.

What is true, is true only for one time and only for one place.

April is the cruellest month.

My life is light, waiting for the death wind, Like a feather on the back of my hand.

History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors and issues.

Each way means loneliness
and communion.

Men tighten the knot of confusion Into perfect misunderstanding.

At the still point, there the dance is.

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance.

And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

Whatever you think, be sure it is what you think; whatever you want, be sure that is what you want; whatever you feel, be sure that is what you feel.

No artist produces great art by a deliberate attempt to express his own personality.

A thousand policemen directing traffic cannot tell you why you come or where you go.

I think we are in rats' alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.

Those who arrive at the end of the journey are not those who began.

People exercise an unconscious selection in being influenced.

It is impossible to design a system so perfect that no one needs to be good.

The young feel tired at the end of an action, the old at the beginning.

No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots;Her coat is one of the tabby kind,with tiger stripes and lepard spots.

Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.

Yeats was the greatest poet of our times ... certainly the greatest in this language, and so far as I am able to judge, in any language.

For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.