T. S. Eliot Quotes & Sayings

Pray for those who chose and oppose — T. S. Eliot

I shall not want Honor in Heaven For I shall meet Sir Philip Sidney And have talk with Coriolanus And other heroes of that kidney. — T. S. Eliot

It is worth dying to find out what life is. — T. S. Eliot

Dear Mother, I am getting on nicely in my work at the bank, and like it ... I want to find out something about the science of money while I am at it; it is an extraordinarily interesting subject ... — T. S. Eliot

Let's not be narrow, nasty, and negative. — T. S. Eliot

The trouble of the modern age is not merely the inability to believe certain things about God and man which our forefathers believed, but the inability to feel towards God and man as they did. — T. S. Eliot

Shall we ever meet again?
And who will meet again?
Meeting is for strangers.
Meeting is for those who do not know each other. — T. S. Eliot

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

In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing — T. S. Eliot

Webster was much possessed by death And saw the skull beneath the skin. — T. S. Eliot

Religion can hardly revive, because it cannot decay. To put the matter bluntly on the lowest level, it is not to anybody's interest that religion should disappear. If it did, many compositors would be thrown out of work; the audiences of our best-selling scientists would shrink to almost nothing; and the typewriters of the Huxley Brothers would cease from tapping. Without religion the whole human race would die, as according to W. H. R. Rivers, some Melanesian tribes have died, solely of boredom. Every one would be affected: the man who regularly has a run in his car and a round of golf on Sunday, quite as much as the punctilious churchgoer. — T. S. Eliot

The important fact is that for the man the act is eternal, and that for the brief space he has to live, he is already dead. He is already in a different world from ours. He has crossed the frontier. The important fact is that something is done which can not be undone-a possibility which none of us realize until we face it ourselves. — T. S. Eliot

From a purely external point of view there is no will; and to find will in any phenomenon requires a certain empathy; we observe aman's actions and place ourselves partly but not wholly in his position; or we act, and place ourselves partly in the position of an outsider. — T. S. Eliot

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet
and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid. — T. S. Eliot

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

I think it was rather an advantage not having any living poets in England or America in whom one took any particular interest. I don't know what it would be like but I think it would be a rather troublesome distraction to have such a lot of dominating presences, as you call them, about. Fortunately we weren't bothered by each other. — T. S. Eliot

We returned to our palaces, these Kingdoms, but no longer at ease here in the old dispensation, with an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death. — T. S. Eliot

So I find words I never thought to speak
In streets I never thought I should revisit
When I left my body on a distant shore. — T. S. Eliot

Justice itself tends to be corrupted by political passion. — T. S. Eliot

For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.

from "The Dry Salvages — T. S. Eliot

Composing on the typewriter, I find that I am sloughing off all my long sentences which I used to dote upon. Short, staccato, like modern French prose. The typewriter makes for lucidity, but I am not sure that it encourages subtlety. — T. S. Eliot

To country people Cows are mild, And flee from any stick they throw; But I'm a timid town bred child, And all the cattle seem to know. — T. S. Eliot

You are here to kneel. — T. S. Eliot

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

Many people give the appearance of progress by shedding the prejudices and irrational postulates of one generation only to acquire those of the next. — T. S. Eliot

No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice — T. S. Eliot

No university ought to be merely a national institution ... The universities should have their common ideals, they should have their common obligations toward each other. They should be independent of the governments of the countries in which they are situated. They should not be institutions for the training of an efficient bureaucracy, or for equipping scientists to get the better of foreign scientists; they should stand for the preservation of learning, for the pursuit of truth, and in so far as men are capable of it, the attainment of wisdom ... — T. S. Eliot

A martyrdom is always the design of God, for His love of men, to warn them and to lead them, to bring them back to His ways. It is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, and who no long desires anything for himself, not even the glory of being a martyr. — T. S. Eliot

If you find examples of humanism which are anti-religious, or at least in opposition to the religious faith of the place and time, then such humanism is purely destructive, for it has never found anything to replace what it has destroyed. — T. S. Eliot

The hippopotamus's day Is passed in sleep; at night he hunts; God works in a mysterious way- The Church can sleep and feed at once. — T. S. Eliot

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom — T. S. Eliot

Thus with most careful devotion Thus with precise attention To detail, interfering preparation Of that which is already prepared Men lighten the knot of confusion Into perfect misunderstanding, Reflecting a pocket-torch of observation ... — T. S. Eliot

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

Here I am, an old man in a dry month,
Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain. — T. S. Eliot

Every moment is a new and shocking transvaluation of all we have ever been. — T. S. Eliot

He laughed like an irresponsible foetus. — T. S. Eliot

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

Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude,
World not world, but that which is not world,
Internal darkness, deprivation
And destitution of all property,
Desiccation of the world of sense,
Evacuation of the world of fancy,
Inoperancy of the world of spirit; — T. S. Eliot

The dream crossed twilight between birth and dying. — T. S. Eliot

Jellicle Cats are black and white
Jellicle Cats are rather small
Jellicle Cats are merry and bright
And pleasant to hear when they caterwaul.
Jellicle Cats have cheerful faces,
Jellicle Cats have bright black eyes;
They like to practise their airs and graces
And wait for the Jellicle Moon to rise. — 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

And all shall be well and/ All manner of thing shall be well/ By the purification of the motive/ In the ground of our beseeching — T. S. Eliot

We can say of Shakespeare, that never has a man turned so little knowledge to such great account. — T. S. Eliot

The soul is so far from being a monad that we have not only to interpret other souls to ourself but to interpret ourself to ourself. — T. S. Eliot

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

As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. — T. S. Eliot

Good poets borrow, great poets steal — T. S. Eliot

The purpose of a Christian education would not be merely to make men and women pious Christians: a system which aimed too rigidly at this end alone would become only obscurantist. A Christian education must primarily teach people to be able to think in Christian categories. — T. S. Eliot

And indeed there will be time to wonder, 'Do I dare?', and 'Do I dare? — T. S. Eliot

Between the desire
And the spasm,
Between the potency
And the existence,
Between the essence
And the descent,
Falls the Shadow. — T. S. Eliot

People exercise an unconscious selection in being influenced. — T. S. Eliot

The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn. — T. S. Eliot

What a poem means is as much what it means to others as what it means to the author; and indeed, in the course of time a poet may become merely reader in respect to his own works, forgetting his original meaning. — T. S. Eliot

A martyr is, he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, not lost it but found it, for he has found freedom in submission to God. The martyr no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of martyrdom. — T. S. Eliot

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

Culture is the one thing that we cannot deliberately aim at. It is the product of a variety of more or less harmonious activities, each pursued for its own sake. — T. S. Eliot

What life have you if you have not life together? — T. S. Eliot

We do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test of its value - a test, it is true, which can only be slowly and cautiously applied, for we are none of us infallible judges of conformity. — T. S. Eliot

Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear — T. S. Eliot

The work of creation is never without travail. — T. S. Eliot

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in infomation? — T. S. Eliot

The difference between being an elder statesman And posing successfully as an elder statesman Is practically negligible. — T. S. Eliot

The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end — 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

I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. — T. S. Eliot

The more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates. — T. S. Eliot

Ambition fortifies the will of man to become ruler over other men: it operates with deception, cajolery, and violence, it is the action of impurity upon impurity. — T. S. Eliot

Who is the third that walks always beside you? When I count there are only you and I together. — T. S. Eliot

You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,
And how, how rare and strange it is, to find
In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,
(For indeed I do not love it ... you knew? you are not blind! How keen you are!)
To find a friend who has these qualities,
Who has, and gives
Those qualities upon which friendship lives.
How much it means that I say this to you-
Without these friendships-life, what cauchemar! — T. S. Eliot

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

What is this self inside us, this silent observer,
Severe and speechless critic, who can terrorize us
And urge us to futile activity,
And in the end, Judge us still more severely,
For the errors into which his own reproaches drove us? — T. S. Eliot

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought. — T. S. Eliot

Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third. — T. S. Eliot

Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair- — T. S. Eliot

life is long between the desire and the spasm. — T. S. Eliot

Can we only love
Something created in our own imaginations? — T. S. Eliot

A christian martyrdom is never an accident, for Saints are not made by accident. — T. S. Eliot

Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves. — T. S. Eliot

Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think — T. S. Eliot

That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all. — T. S. Eliot

Oh, I thought that I was giving him so much!
And he to me - and the giving and the taking
Seemed so right: not in terms of calculation
Of what was good for the persons we had been
But for the new person, us. If I could feel
As I did then, even now it would seem right.
And then I found we were only strangers
And that there had been neither giving nor taking
But that we had merely made use of each other
Each for his purpose. That's horrible. Can we only love
Something created by our own imagination?
Are we all in fact unloving and unlovable?
The one is alone, and if one is alone
Then lover and beloved are equally unreal
And the dreamer is no more real than his dreams. — T. S. Eliot

I must tell you that I should really like to think there's something wrong with me- Because, if there isn't, then there's something wrong with the world itself-and that's much more frightening! That would be terrible. So I'd rather believe there is something wrong with me, that could be put right. — T. S. Eliot

Believe me, Michael:
Those who flee from the past will always lose the race.
I know this from experience. When you reach your goal,
Your imagined paradise of success and grandeur,
You will find your past failures waiting there to greet you. — T. S. Eliot

The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. — T. S. Eliot

Everyone's alone - or so it seems to me. They make noises, and think they are talking to each other; They make faces, and think they understand each other. And I'm sure they don't. Is that a delusion? — T. S. Eliot

The overwhelming pressure of mediocrity, sluggish and indomitable as a glacier, will mitigate the most violent, and depress the most exalted revolution. — T. S. Eliot

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers. — T. S. Eliot

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

We have only to conquer
Now, by suffering. This is the easier victory.
Now is the triumph of the cross. — T. S. Eliot

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. — T. S. Eliot

His laughter tinkled among the teacups. — T. S. Eliot

We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds, ... for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism. — T. S. Eliot

It's harder to confess the sin that no one believes in Than the crime that everyone can appreciate. For the crime is in relation to the law And the sin is in relation to the sinner. — T. S. Eliot

Those who glitter with the glory of the hummingbird meaning death — T. S. Eliot

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume? — T. S. Eliot

It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the 'dear deceit' of beauty. — T. S. Eliot

The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation. — T. S. Eliot

When we talk about Poetry, with a capital P, we are apt to think only of the more intense emotions or the more magical phrase: nevertheless there are a great many casements in poetry which are not magic, and which do not open on the foam of perilous seas, but are perfectly good windows for all that. — T. S. Eliot

I confess ... that I am not myself very much concerned with the question of influence, or with those publicists who have impressed their names upon the public by catching the morning tide and rowing very vast in the direction in which the current was flowing; but rather that there should always be a few writers preoccupied in penetrating to the core of the matter, in trying to arrive at the truth and to set it forth, without too much hope, without ambition to alter the immediate course of affairs, and without being downcast or defeated when nothing appears to ensue. — T. S. Eliot

With out some kind of god, man is not very intresting — T. S. Eliot