T. S. Eliot Quotes

You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; They called me the hyacinth girl.' —Yet when we came back, ...

Do I dare Disturb the universe?

We ask only to be reassuredAbout the noises in the cellarAnd the window that should not have been op...

One error, in fact, of eccentricity in poetry is to seek for new human emotions to express; and in t...

Thus with most careful devotionThus with precise attentionTo detail, interfering preparationOf that ...

One thing you cannot know: The sudden extinction of every alternative, The unexpected crash of the i...

You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure,That time is no healer: the patient is no longer...

The backward look behind the assuranceOf recorded history, the backward half-lookOver the shoulder, ...

Between the desireAnd the spasm,Between the potencyAnd the existence,Between the essenceAnd the desc...

Two people who know they do not understand each other, breeding children whom they do not understand...

We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during wh...

Your burden is not to clear your conscienceBut to learn how to bear the burdens on your conscience.

Everyone’s alone—or so it seems to me.They make noises, and think they are talking to each other;The...

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse

Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,I had n...

Someone said, 'The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.' Prec...

Now that lilacs are in bloomShe has a bowl of lilacs in her roomAnd twists one in her fingers while ...

We are the hollow menWe are the stuffed menLeaning togetherHeadpiece filled with straw. Alas!Our dri...

With Cats, some say, one rule is true:Don’t speak till you are spoken to.Myself, I do not hold with ...

For he will doAs he do doAnd there's no doing anything about it!

Gus is the Cat at the Theatre Door.His name, as I ought to have told you before,Is really Asparagus....

I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behi...

Bustopher Jones is not skin and bones — In fact, he's remarkably fat.He doesn't haunt pubs — he has ...

He is quiet and small, he is blackFrom his ears to the tip of his tail;He can creep through the tini...

I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots;Her coat is one of the tabby kind,with tiger s...

Before a Cat will condescendTo treat you as a trusted friend,Some little token of esteemIs needed, l...

But above and beyond there's still one name left over,And that is the name that you never will guess...

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,It isn't just one of your holiday games;You may think at fi...

The Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat:If you offer him pheasant he would rather have grouse.If you put...

He's outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)And his footprints are not found in any fi...

The Pekes and the Pollicles, everyone knows, Are proud and implacable, passionate foes;It is always ...

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

Old Deuteronomy's lived a long time;He's a Cat who has lived many lives in succession.He was famous ...

We have only to conquer Now, by suffering. This is the easier victory.Now is the triumph of the cros...

A christian martyrdom is never an accident, for Saints are not made by accident.

A martyrdom is always the design of God, for His love of men, to warn them and to lead them, to brin...

Unreal friendship may turn to real But real friendship, once ended, cannot be mended

Truth on our level is a different thing from truth for the jellyfish.

Footfalls echo in the memorydown the passage we did not taketowards the door we never openedinto the...

The dove descending breaks the airWith flame of incandescent terrorOf which the tongues declareThe o...

The only wisdom we can hope to acquireIs the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.

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

This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.

Genuine blasphemy genuine in spirit and not purely verbal is the product of partial belief and is...

It is not necessarily those lands which are the most fertile or most favored in climate that seem to...

Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs, rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys, adv...

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

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

You are not here to verify,instruct yourself, or inform curiosityor carry report. You are here to kn...

People exercise an unconscious selection in being influenced.

What we call the beginning is often an end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is wh...

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

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

Half of the harm that is done in this world Is due to people who want to feel important. They don't ...

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, But the faith and the love and the ho...

So the lover must struggle for words.

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

Business today consists in persuading crowds.

Human kind cannot bear very much reality.

No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: he may have w...

The poet's mind is ... a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings phrases images ...

There are three conditions which often look alikeYet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgero...

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

Time present and time pastAre both perhaps present in time futureAnd time future contained in time p...

We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we starte...

What was to be the value of the long looked forward to,Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenityAnd...

The dream crossed twilight between birth and dying.

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we sta...

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

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

We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we starte...

What the dead had no speech for, when living,They can tell you, being dead: the communicationOf the ...

Time present and time pastAre both perhaps present in time futureAnd time future contained in time p...

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

In my end is my beginning.

A condition of complete simplicity(Costing not less than everything)

For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice.

About anyone so great as Shakespeare, it is probable that we can never be right; and if we can never...

Do not let me hearOf the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,Their fear of fear and frenzy,...

music heard so deeplyThat it is not heard at all, butyou are the musicWhile the music lasts.

Time and the bell have buried the day,The black cloud carries the sun away.Will the sunflower turn t...

Under the penitential gatesSustained by staring SeraphimWhere the souls of the devoutBurn invisible ...

Honest criticism and sensible appreciation are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.

You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,And how, how rare and strange it is, to findIn ...

But the Church cannot be, in any political sense, either conservative or liberal, or revolutionary. ...

There is one who remembers the way to your door: Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.

The dripping blood our only drink,The bloody flesh our only food:In spite of which we like to thinkT...

Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.Be prepared for him who knows how to ask ques...

To country people Cows are mild,And flee from any stick they throw;But I’m a timid town bred child,A...

The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future o...

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

Distracted from distraction by distraction

Destiny waits in the hand of god, shaping the still unshapen..

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

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a p...

This is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsNot with a...

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance.

And right action is freedom from past and future also.For most of us, this is the aim never to be re...

Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance

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

The journey not the arrival matters.