T. S. Eliot Quotes

How wild it was, to let it be.

~ T. S. Eliot

We understand the ordinary business of living, We know how to work the machine

~ T. S. Eliot

You are not here to verify,instruct yourself, or inform curiosityor carry report. You are here to kneelwhere prayer has been valid. And prayer is more than an order of words, the conscious occupation of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.

~ T. S. Eliot

A toothache, or a violent passion, is not necessarily diminished by our knowledge of its causes, its character, its importance or insignificance.

~ 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

The difference between being an elder statesman And posing successfully as an elder statesman Is practically negligible.

~ T. S. Eliot

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

~ T. S. Eliot

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

~ T. S. Eliot

The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always asked to do things and you are not yet decrepit enough to turn them down.

~ T. S. Eliot

What is actual is actual only for one time. And only for one place.

~ T. S. Eliot

Genuine blasphemy genuine in spirit and not purely verbal is the product of partial belief and is as impossible to the complete atheist as to the perfect Christian.

~ T. S. Eliot

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

~ T. S. Eliot

One starts an action simply because one must do something.

~ T. S. Eliot

The historical sense involves a perception not only of the pastness of the past but of its presence.

~ T. S. Eliot

To do the useful thing to say the courageous thing to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.

~ T. S. Eliot

When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work it is constantly amalgamating disparate experiences.

~ T. S. Eliot

When a great poet has lived certain things have been done once for all and cannot be achieved again.

~ T. S. Eliot

No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: he may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.

~ T. S. Eliot

The poet's mind is ... a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings phrases images which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.

~ T. S. Eliot

Poetry is a mug's game.

~ 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

April is the crudest month breeding Lilacs out of the dead land mixing Memory and desire stirring Dull roots with spring rain.

~ T. S. Eliot

Half of 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.

~ T. S. Eliot

I suppose some editors are failed writers - but so are most writers.

~ T. S. Eliot

An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better a little better.

~ T. S. Eliot

The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all.

~ T. S. Eliot

Business today consists in persuading crowds.

~ T. S. Eliot

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

~ T. S. Eliot

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.

~ T. S. Eliot

This love is silent.

~ T. S. Eliot

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

~ T. S. Eliot

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

~ T. S. Eliot

Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs, rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys, advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm, retreating to the corner of arm and knee, eager to be reassured, taking pleasure in the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree.

~ T. S. Eliot

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

~ T. S. Eliot

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

~ T. S. Eliot

You are the music while the music lasts.

~ T. S. Eliot

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.

~ T. S. Eliot

There is no method but to be very intelligent.

~ T. S. Eliot

I am an Anglo-Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature and a royalist in politics.

~ T. S. Eliot

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