T. S. Eliot Quotes

The majority of poems one outgrows and outlives, as one outgrows and outlives the majority of human passions.

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

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.

When we read of human beings behaving in certain ways, with the approval of the author, who gives his benediction to this behavior by his attitude towards the result of the behavior arranged by himself, we can be influenced towards behaving in the same way.

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.

Talent imitates, genius steals.

The Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying within and attacked from without.

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river Is a strong brown god-sullen, untamed and intractable.

Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important.

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.

We shall not cease from exploration

Writing every day is a way of keeping the engine running, and then something good may come out of it.

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.

And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness.

Sand. Everywhere. In the bed, in the shower, all over the floor. Grrrrr.

The winter evening settles down With smell of steaks in passageways. Six o'clock. The burnt-out ends of smoky days. And now a gusty shower wraps The grimy scraps Of withered leaves about your feet And newspapers from vacant lots; The showers beat On broken blinds and chimney-pots, And at the corner of the street A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps. And then the lighting of the lamps.

The dream crossed twilight between birth and dying.

When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience ?in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes.

The circle of our understanding is a very restricted area.

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

In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing

I say to you: Make perfect your will. / I say: take no thought of the harvest, / But only of proper sowing.

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.

Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity.

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

A thousand policemen directing traffic cannot tell you why you come or where you go.

One starts an action simply because one must do something.

Tradition: how the vitality of the past enriches the life of the present.

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you Which shall be the darkness of God. . . . So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

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

Humankind cannot stand reality.

In order to arrive at what you are not, you must go through the way in which you are not.

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 when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.

If we all were judged according to the consequences Of all our words and deeds, beyond the intention And beyond our limited understanding Of ourselves and others, we should all be condemned.

Whatever you do, don't whimper, but take the consequences.

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

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

If time and space, as sages say, Are things which cannot be, The sun which does not feel decay No greater is than we. So why, Love, should we ever pray To live a century? The butterfly that lives a day Has lived eternity.

You will find that you survive humiliation. And that's an experience of incalculable value.

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

But the Church cannot be, in any political sense, either conservative or liberal, or revolutionary. Conservatism is too often conservation of the wrong things: liberalism a relaxation of discipline; revolution a denial of the permanent things.

What profession is more trying than that of author? After you finish a piece of work it only seems good to you for a few weeks; or if it seems good at all you are convinced that it is the last you will be able to write; and if it seems bad you wonder whether everything you have done isn’t poor stuff really; and it is one kind of agony while you are writing, and another kind when you aren’t.

Cats must have three names-an everyday name, such as Peter; a more particular, dignified name, such as Quaxo, Bombalurina, or Jellylorum; and, thirdly, the name the cat thinks up for himself, his deep and inscrutable singular Name.

Till Human voices wake us, and we drown.

A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter.

I am glad you have a Cat, but I do not believe it is So remarkable a cat as My Cat.

I should have been a pair of ragged claws/ Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word / Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.