"We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time."
— T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."
— T.S. Eliot

"This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."
— T.S. Eliot

"Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."
— T.S. Eliot

"Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood."
— T.S. Eliot

"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. Eliot (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Others)

"April is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desire, stirring
dull roots with spring rain."
— T.S. Eliot (The Waste Land)

"I've measured out my life in coffee spoons."
— T.S. Eliot

"I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing."
— T.S. Eliot

"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers."
— T.S. Eliot

"Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea."
— T.S. Eliot

"We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;"
— T.S. Eliot

"You are the music while the music lasts."
— T.S. Eliot

"Humankind cannot bear very much reality"
— T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)

"I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me."
— T.S. Eliot

"We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us... and we drown."
— T.S. Eliot (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems)

"Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions."
— T.S. Eliot

"Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough."
— T.S. Eliot

"I will show you fear in a handful of dust."
— T.S. Eliot

"There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet."
— T.S. Eliot

"If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?"
— T.S. Eliot

"If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it offers you."
— T.S. Eliot

"'You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
'They called me the hyacinth girl.'
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Od' und leer das Meer."
— T.S. Eliot (The Waste Land and Other Writings)

"Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden."
— T.S. Eliot

"Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow"
— T.S. Eliot

"We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger."
— T.S. Eliot (The Cocktail Party)

"The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust."
— T.S. Eliot

"And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor -
And this, and so much more? -"
— T.S. Eliot (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems)

"Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance"
— T.S. Eliot

"Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still."
— T.S. Eliot

"I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter."
— T.S. Eliot

"No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool."
— T.S. Eliot

"Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
-But who is that on the other side of you?"
— T.S. Eliot (The Waste Land and Other Poems)

"Teach us to care and not to care"
— T.S. Eliot

"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."
— T.S. Eliot (Selected Essays)

"An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry. "
— T.S. Eliot

"I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."
— T.S. Eliot (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems)

"I love reading another reader’s list of favorites. Even when I find I do not share their tastes or predilections, I am provoked to compare, contrast, and contradict. It is a most healthy exercise, and one altogether fruitful."
— T.S. Eliot

"Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

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. Eliot

"Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter."
— T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)

"A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
- The Waste Land (ll. 22-30)"
— T.S. Eliot

"And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea."
— T.S. Eliot

"I can connect
Nothing with nothing"
— T.S. Eliot

"What is hell? Hell is oneself.
Hell is alone, the other figures in it
Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from
And nothing to escape to. One is always alone."
— T.S. Eliot

"To believe in the supernatural is not simply to believe that after living a successful, material, and fairly virtuous life here one will continue to exist in the best-possible substitute for this world, or that after living a starved and stunted life here one will be compensated with all the good things one has gone without: it is to believe that the supernatural is the greatest reality here and now."
— T.S. Eliot

"Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality."
— T.S. Eliot

"In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."
— T.S. Eliot

"We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw...
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper"
— T.S. Eliot

"No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead."
— T.S. Eliot (The Sacred Wood)

"We had the experience but missed the meaning. And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form."
— T.S. Eliot