T.S. Eliot > Quotes

“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

“Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.”
― 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

“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

“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

“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

“Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”
― 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

“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

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.”
― 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

“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

“You are the music while the music lasts.”
― T.S. Eliot

“I've measured out my life in coffee spoons.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems

“Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow”
― T.S. Eliot

“Humankind cannot bear very much reality”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man”
― T.S. Eliot

“Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.”
― T.S. Eliot

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

“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

“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.”
― 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

“I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.”
― 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

“Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”
― 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

“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

“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.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

“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

“Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity”
― T.S. Eliot

“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.”
― T.S. Eliot

“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

“Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Teach us to care and not to care”
― T.S. Eliot

“There is one who remembers the way to your door: Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.”
― T.S. Eliot

“It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous.
Resign yourself to be the fool you are...
...We must always take risks. That is our destiny...”
― T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party

“To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Good writers borrow, Great writers steal.”
― T.S. Eliot

“These fragments I have shored against my ruins”
― T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land and Other Poems: Including the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

“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

“Success is relative. It is what we make of the mess we have made of things.”
― T.S. Eliot

“I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.”
― T.S. Eliot

“There is one order of beauty which seems made to turn heads. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle.”
― T.S. Eliot

“We had the experience but missed the meaning. And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Half 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. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance”
― T.S. Eliot