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

There is no method but to be very intelligent.

— T. S. Eliot

We shall not cease from exploration

— T. S. Eliot

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?

— T. S. Eliot

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

— 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

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

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

— T. S. Eliot

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.

— T. S. Eliot

This love is silent.

— T. S. Eliot

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?

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

— T. S. Eliot

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart: for the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.

— 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

Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity.

— T. S. Eliot

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

— 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

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

— T. S. Eliot

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

— T. S. Eliot

Home is where one starts from.

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

Where is all the knowledge we lost with information?

— T. S. Eliot

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

— T. S. Eliot

I am moved by fancies that are curledInfinitely suffering thing.

— T. S. Eliot

Business today consists in persuading crowds.

— T. S. Eliot

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.

— T. S. Eliot

The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

— T. S. Eliot

Atheism should always be encouraged (i.e. rationalistic not emotional atheism) for the sake of the Faith.

— 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

Mr. Aldous Huxley, who is perhaps one of those people who have to perpetrate thirty bad novels before producing a good one, has a certain natural — but little developed — aptitude for seriousness.

— T. S. Eliot

Where there is no temple there shall be no homes.

— T. S. Eliot

A dangerous person to disagree with.

— T. S. Eliot

Any poet, if he is to survive beyond his 25th year, must alter; he must seek new literary influences; he will have different emotions to express.

— T. S. Eliot

It is a test (a positive test, I do not assert that it is always valid negatively), that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

— T. S. Eliot

In my beginning is my end.

— T. S. Eliot

I am glad you have a Cat, but I do not believe it is So remarkable a cat as My Cat. My Cat is a Lilliecat Hubvously. What a lilliecat it is. There never was such a Lilliecat. Its Name is JELLYORUM and its one Idea is to be Usefull!!

— T. S. Eliot

All significant truths are private truths. As they become public they cease to become truths; they become facts, or at best, part of the public character; or at worst, catchwords.

— T. S. Eliot

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

— T. S. Eliot

Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.

— T. S. Eliot

It is self-evident that St. Louis affected me more deeply than any other environment has ever done. I feel that there is something in having passed one's childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those people who have not. I consider myself fortunate to have been born here, rather than in Boston, or New York, or London.

— T. S. Eliot

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.

— T. S. Eliot

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.

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

It is certain that a book is not harmless merely because no one is consciously offended by it.

— T. S. Eliot

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.

— T. S. Eliot

No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job....Poetry..remains one person talking to another....no poet can write a poem of amplitude unless he is the master of the prosaic.

— T. S. Eliot

Let's not be narrow, nasty, and negative.

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

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.'

— T. S. Eliot

The majority of mankind is lazy-minded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith; and when the ordinary man calls himself a sceptic or an unbeliever, that is ordinarily a simple pose, cloaking a disinclination to think anything out to a conclusion.

— T. S. Eliot

The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours.

— T. S. Eliot

Let us go then, you and I,Like a patient etherized upon a table.

— 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

In the room the women come and goTalking of Michelangelo.

— 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

There will be time, there will be timeBefore the taking of a toast and tea.

— T. S. Eliot

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

— T. S. Eliot

Do I dareBeneath the music from a farther room.

— T. S. Eliot

You are the music while the music lasts.

— T. S. Eliot

Home is where one starts from.

— T. S. Eliot

And I have known the eyes already, known them all — To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

— T. S. Eliot

It's not wise to violate rules until you know how to observe them.

— T. S. Eliot

And I have known the arms already, known them all — And should I then presume?

— T. S. Eliot

If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?

— T. S. Eliot

I am no prophet — and here's no great matter; And in short, I was afraid.

— T. S. Eliot

The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.

— T. S. Eliot

It is impossible to say just what I mean!That is not what I meant, at all."

— T. S. Eliot

There is no method but to be very intelligent.

— T. S. Eliot

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;Almost, at times, the Fool.

— T. S. Eliot

It is obvious that we can no more explain a passion to a person who has never experienced it than we can explain light to the blind.

— T. S. Eliot

No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of æsthetic, not merely historical, criticism.

— 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

Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature, will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. And the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities.

— T. S. Eliot

This love is silent.

— T. S. Eliot

Some one said: "The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did." Precisely, and they are that which we know.

— 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

What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

It is not the "greatness," the intensity, of the emotions, the components, but the intensity of the artistic process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place, that counts.

— T. S. Eliot

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

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?

— T. S. Eliot

The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. Both errors tend to make him "personal." 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

It's strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words.

— T. S. Eliot

Here I am, an old man in a dry month, Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.

— T. S. Eliot

Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself.

— T. S. Eliot

Signs are taken for wonders. “We would see a sign!”Swaddled with darkness.

— T. S. Eliot

There is not a more repulsive spectacle than on old man who will not forsake the world, which has already forsaken him.

— T. S. Eliot

Weave the wind. I have no ghosts,Under a windy knob.

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. Think at lastSince what is kept must be adulterated?

— T. S. Eliot

There is no absolute point of view from which real and ideal can be finally separated and labelled.

— T. S. Eliot

so the countess passed on until she came through the little park, where Niobe presented her with a cabinet, and so departed.

— 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

The broad-backed hippopotamusHe is merely flesh and blood.

— T. S. Eliot

April is the cruellest month.

— T. S. Eliot

Webster was much possessed by deathAnd saw the skull beneath the skin

— T. S. Eliot

Our difficulties of the moment must always be dealt with somehow, but our permanent difficulties are difficulties of every moment.

— T. S. Eliot

Grishkin is nice: herGives promise of pneumatic bliss.

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

April is the cruellest month, breeding Dull roots with spring rain.

— T. S. Eliot

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought.

— T. S. Eliot

There is shadow under this red rock I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

— 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

I was neither Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

Unreal city, I had not thought death had undone so many.

— T. S. Eliot

The Nobel is a ticket to one's own funeral. No one has ever done anything after he got it.

— T. S. Eliot

Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself.

— T. S. Eliot

O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag— So intelligent

— T. S. Eliot

We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion.

— T. S. Eliot

O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

— T. S. Eliot

Art never improves, but... the material of art is never quite the same.

— T. S. Eliot

Who is the third who walks always beside you There is always another one walking beside you

— 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

What is that sound high in the air Unreal

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

In this decayed hole among the mountainsThere is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.

— T. S. Eliot

My greatest trouble is getting the curtain up and down.

— T. S. Eliot

Then spoke the thunder By this, and this only, we have existed.

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

I have heard the key Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison.

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

These fragments I have shored against my ruins Shantih shantih shantih

— 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

A penny for the Old Guy

— T. S. Eliot

So the lover must struggle for words.

— T. S. Eliot

We are the hollow menHeadpiece filled with straw.

— T. S. Eliot

Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.

— T. S. Eliot

Those who have crossedThe stuffed men.

— T. S. Eliot

The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.

— T. S. Eliot

Where is all the knowledge we lost with information?

— T. S. Eliot

Eyes I dare not meet in dreamsThan a fading star.

— T. S. Eliot

As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. 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

Between the ideaFalls the Shadow

— T. S. Eliot

Between the conceptionFalls the Shadow

— T. S. Eliot

Between the desireFalls the Shadow .

— T. S. Eliot

This is the way the world endsNot with a bang but a whimper.

— T. S. Eliot

Because I do not hope to turn again The vanished power of the usual reign?

— T. S. Eliot

Because I do not hope to knowThere, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

— T. S. Eliot

Because I know that time is always time I renounce the blessèd face

— T. S. Eliot

Because I cannot hope to turn again Upon which to rejoice

— T. S. Eliot

Let these words answer May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

— T. S. Eliot

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only The wind will listen.

— T. S. Eliot

This is the land which ye Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

— T. S. Eliot

Redeem While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

— T. S. Eliot

Wavering between the profit and the loss The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying

— T. S. Eliot

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden, Teach us to care and not to care

— T. S. Eliot

Sister, mother And let my cry come unto Thee.

— T. S. Eliot

The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven, The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.

— T. S. Eliot

The world turns and the world changes, The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.

— T. S. Eliot

You neglect and belittle the desert. The desert is in the heart of your brother.

— T. S. Eliot

Let me show you the work of the humble. Listen.

— T. S. Eliot

In the vacant places We will build with new bricks

— T. S. Eliot

Where the bricks are fallen Every man to his work.

— T. S. Eliot

What life have you, if you have not life together? And no community not lived in praise of GOD.

— T. S. Eliot

And now you live dispersed on ribbon roads, Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere.

— T. S. Eliot

Much to cast down, much to build, much to restore.

— T. S. Eliot

I have given you the power of choice, and you only alternate Between futile speculation and unconsidered action.

— T. S. Eliot

And the wind shall say: "Here were decent godless people: And a thousand lost golf balls."

— T. S. Eliot

When the Stranger says: "What is the meaning of this city ? To make money from each other"? or "This is a community"?

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

There is one who remembers the way to your door: You shall not deny the Stranger.

— T. S. Eliot

They constantly try to escape The man that pretends to be.

— T. S. Eliot

Then it seemed as if men must proceed from light to light, in the light of the Word, Often halting, loitering, straying, delaying, returning, yet following no other way.

— T. S. Eliot

But it seems that something has happened that has never happened before: though we know not just when, or why, or how, or where. And then Money, and Power, and what they call Life, or Race, or Dialectic.

— 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

What have we to do but stand with empty hands and palms turned upwards in an age which advances progressively backwards?

— T. S. Eliot

There came one who spoke of the shame of Jerusalem Like all men in all places.

— T. S. Eliot

In spite of all the dishonour, Of old men on winter evenings.

— T. S. Eliot

Our age is an age of moderate virtue And moderate vice

— T. S. Eliot

The soul of Man must quicken to creation.

— T. S. Eliot

Out of the meaningless practical shapes of all that is living or lifeless There spring the perfect order of speech, and the beauty of incantation.

— T. S. Eliot

The work of creation is never without travail

— T. S. Eliot

Light The visible reminder of Invisible Light.

— T. S. Eliot

O Light Invisible, we praise Thee! Too bright for mortal vision.

— 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

We see the light but see not whence it comes. O Light Invisible, we glorify Thee!

— T. S. Eliot

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter, When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.

— T. S. Eliot

When the day's hustle and bustle is done, Then the Gumbie Cat's work is but hardly begun.

— T. S. Eliot

You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;

— T. S. Eliot

Yes the Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat — And there's no doing anything about it!

— T. S. Eliot

Jellicle Cats come out tonight, Jellicles come to the Jellicle Ball.

— T. S. Eliot

Old Deuteronomy's lived a long time; A long while before Queen Victoria's accession.

— T. S. Eliot

And we all say: OH! As Magical Mr. Mistoffelees!

— T. S. Eliot

He's the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad's despair: For when they reach the scene of crime — Macavity's not there!

— T. S. Eliot

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

— T. S. Eliot

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity, He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.

— T. S. Eliot

He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:Macavity wasn't there.

— T. S. Eliot

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity, But when a crime's discovered, then Macavity's not there!

— T. S. Eliot

They say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!

— T. S. Eliot

These modern productions are all very well, As Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.

— T. S. Eliot

You now have learned enough to see But all may be described in verse.

— T. S. Eliot

Not the intense moment

— T. S. Eliot