68 T. S. Eliot Quotes That Will Upgrade Your Thinking
Thomas Stearns Eliot OM (born 26 September 1888, St. Louis, Missouri, United States – died 4 January 1965, Kensington, London, United Kingdom) was a poet, essayist, playwright, literary critic publisher, and editor. He is best known as a leader of the Modernist movement in poetry and as the author of such works as "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915), "The Waste Land" (1922), "The Hollow Men" (1925), "Ash Wednesday" (1930), and "Four Quartets" (1943). Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948, "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry".
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.I will show you fear in a handful of dust.Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.For last year’s words belong to last year’s language And next year’s words await another voice.This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.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.To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
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. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.
T. S. Eliot
Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important.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?Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it offers you.
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
It’s strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words.Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.You are the music while the music lasts.The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.Everyone gets the experience. Some get the lesson.Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
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
In my beginning is my end. In succession Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended, Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass. Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires, Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth Which is already flesh, fur and faeces, Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
from "East Coker".
T. S. Eliot
If we really want to pray we must first learn to listen, for in the silence of the heart God speaks.In life there is not time to grieve long.So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man.Finding a way to live the simple life is one of life's supreme complications.Home is where one starts from.It’s not wise to violate rules until you know how to observe them.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.Knowledge is invariably a matter of degree: you cannot put your finger upon even the simplest datum and say this we know.
The tendency of liberals is to create bodies of men and women-of all classes-detached from tradition, alienated from religion, and susceptible to mass suggestion-mob rule. And a mob will be no less a mob if it is well fed, well clothed, well housed, and well disciplined.
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.
T. S. Eliot
The journey, Not the destination matters.All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance.Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope, For hope would be hope for the wrong thing.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.The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.Turn things you’ve always wanted to do, into things you’ve done.If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?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.No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job.Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.Books. Cats. Life is good.The lot of man is ceaseless labor, Or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder.There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.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.O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart: for the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.Unreal friendship may turn to real. But real friendship, once ended, cannot be mended.People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events.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.There is not a more repulsive spectacle than on old man who will not forsake the world, which has already forsaken him.Business today consists in persuading crowds.We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion.The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious.The most important thing for poets to do is to write as little as possible.Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden.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.Every moment is a fresh beginning.War is not a life: it is a situation,One which may neither be ignored nor accepted.You will have to live with those memories and make them into something new. Only by acceptance of the past will you alter its meaning.The circle of our understanding is a very restricted area.Two people who know they do not understand each other, breeding children whom they do not understand and who will never understand them.
