T. S. Eliot Quotes (109 Quotes)

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

Because I do not hope to turn again Because I do not hope Because I do not hope to turn.

We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion.

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious.

The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours.

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.

Knowledge is invariably a matter of degree: you cannot put your finger upon even the simplest datum and say this we know.

The jungle crouched, humped in silence.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought.

The moon has lost her memory.

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

There is no absolute point of view from which real and ideal can be finally separated and labelled.

The Nobel is a ticket to one's own funeral. No one has ever done anything after he got it.

Business today consists in persuading crowds.

April is the cruellest month.

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

It is obvious that we can no more explain a passion to a person who has never experienced it than we can explain light to the blind.

Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself.

Where there is no temple there shall be no homes.

You are the music while the music lasts.

People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events.

Any poet, if he is to survive beyond his 25th year, must alter; he must seek new literary influences; he will have different emotions to express.

Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many.

We must leave it now to fate.

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

I don't believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates.

But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope, For hope would be hope for the wrong thing.

A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey.

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Poetry should help, not only to refine the language of the time, but to prevent it from changing too rapidly.

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

This is the use of memory:
For liberation-not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation
From the future as well as the past.

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.

This love is silent.

My words echo
Thus, in your mind.

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

So the lover must struggle for words.

Where is all the knowledge we lost with information?

This is the death of water and fire.

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

She smooths the hair of the grass.

The remarkable thing about television is that it permits several million people to laugh at the same joke and still feel lonely.

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

People exercise an unconscious selection in being influenced.