Best T. S. Eliot Quotes

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

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.

The awful daring of a moment's surrender which an age of prudence can never retract.

A people without history is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern of timeless moments.

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

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.

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information.

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.

The dream crossed twilight between birth and dying.

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

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.

Liberty is a different kind of pain from prison.

Friendship should be more than biting time can sever.

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be: am an attendant lord, one that will do to swell a progress, start a scene or two, advise the prince.

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.

Birth, copulation and death. That's all the facts when you come to the brass tacks.

In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair.

People exercise an unconscious selection in being influenced.

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.

There are flood and drought over the eyes and in the mouth, dead water and dead sand contending for the upper hand. The parched eviscerate soil gapes at the vanity of toil, laughs without mirth. This is the death of the earth.

Business today consists in persuading crowds.

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

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

Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to ...

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion…

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

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

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

I suppose some editors are failed writers; but so are most writers.

Our emotions are only incidents in the effort to keep day and night together.

So far as we are human, what we do must be either evil or good: so far as we do evil or good, we are human: and it is better, in a paradoxical way, to do evil than to do nothing: at least we exist.

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.

Love is most nearly itself when here and now cease to matter.

We are not here to triumph by fighting, by strata gem, or by resistance, not to fight with beasts as men. We have fought the beast and have conquered. We have only to conquer now, by suffering. This is the easier victory.

There is no method but to be very intelligent.

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

Footfalls echo in the memory down the passage which we did not take towards the door we never opened into the rose-garden.

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.

April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.

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

It is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.

It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labor.

A tradition without intelligence is not worth having.

War is not a life: it is a situation, one which may neither be ignored nor accepted.

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

The young feel tired at the end of an action, the old at the beginning.