Top 588 Quotes & Sayings by T. S. Eliot - Page 2

If you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human being can pour out for you, let a young mother hear you call dear baby 'it.'

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

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.

People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events.

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

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

Playwriting gets into your blood and you can't stop it. At least not until the producers or the public tell you to.

The most important thing for poets to do is to write as little as possible.

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.

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

The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started.

Nothing pleases people more than to go on thinking what they have always thought, and at the same time imagine that they are thinking something new and daring: it combines the advantage of security and the delight of adventure.

I learn a great deal by merely observing you, and letting you talk as long as you please, and taking note of what you do not say.

Between the conception and the creation, between the emotion and the response, Falls the shadow.

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

If we really want to pray we must first learn to listen, for in the silence of the heart God speaks.

Success is relative. It is what we make of the mess we have made of things.

Every moment is a fresh beginning.

What is true, is true only for one time and only for one place.

Talent imitates, genius steals.

No one can become really educated without having pursued some study in which he took no interest- for it is a part of education to learn to interest ourselves in subjects for which we have no aptitude.

If you do not push the boundaries, you will never know where they are.

Men live by forgetting and woman live on memories.

If you will not have God (and He is a jealous God), you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin.

Survival is your strength not your shame.

The circle of our understanding is a very restricted area.

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

Those who arrive at the end of the journey are not those who began.

Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.

We should not confuse information with knowledge.

The journey, Not the destination matters.

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

Everyone gets the experience. Some get the lesson.

At the still point, there the dance is.

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

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.

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

The majority of mankind is lazyminded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith.

A national culture, if it is to flourish, should be a constellation of cultures, the constitutes of which, benefiting each other, benefit the whole.

We shall not cease from exploring, And the end of our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

Men tighten the knot of confusion Into perfect misunderstanding.

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.

A wrong attitude toward nature implies, somewhere, a wrong attitude toward God.

life is long between the desire and the spasm.

The definition of hell is a place where nothing connects with nothing.

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.

Finding a way to live the simple life is one of life's supreme complications.

Turn things you've always wanted to do, into things you've done

For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

People are only influenced in the direction in which they want to go, and influence consists largely in making them conscious of their wishes to proceed in that direction.

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance.

Only by acceptance of the past, can you alter it

It is in fact a part of the function of education to help us escape, not from our own time - for we are bound by that - but from the intellectual and emotional limitations of our time.

The darkness declares the glory of light.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it offers you.

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

When the whole world is running headlong towards the precipice, one who walks in the opposite direction is looked at as being crazy.

We had the experience, but we missed the meaning.

What is this self-inside us, this silent observer, severe and speechless critic, who can terrorize us, and urge us onto futile activity, and in the end, judge us still more severely for the errors into which his own reproaches drove us?