Thomas Stearns Eliot OM was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, and literary and social critic. Profoundly inspirational TS Eliot quotes will encourage growth in life, make you wiser and broaden your perspective.
If you’re searching for poetry quotes that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of quotes from Walt Whitman, powerful Sylvia Plath quotes and famous William Blake quotes.
Famous TS Eliot Quotes
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. T. S. Eliot
For last year’s words belong to last year’s language And next year’s words await another voice. T.S. Eliot
Home is where one starts from. T. S. Eliot
This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper. T.S. Eliot
The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. T. S. Eliot
To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life. T.S. Eliot
This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper. T. S. Eliot
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. T.S. Eliot
The last temptation is the greatest treason to do the right deed for the wrong reason. T. S. Eliot
Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough. T.S. Eliot
Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity. T. S. Eliot
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. T.S. Eliot
This love is silent. T. S. Eliot
The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man. 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
Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions. T.S. Eliot
I will show you fear in a handful of dust. T. S. Eliot
For I have known them all already, known them all Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. T.S. Eliot
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. T. S. Eliot
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood. T.S. Eliot
It’s not wise to violate rules until you know how to observe them. T. S. Eliot
Books. Cats. Life is good. T.S. Eliot
In my beginning is my end. T. S. Eliot
Humankind cannot bear very much reality. 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
If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are? 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
I will show you fear in a handful of dust. T.S. Eliot
The progress of an artist is a continual self sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. T. S. Eliot
Unreal friendship may turn to real But real friendship, once ended, cannot be mended. T.S. Eliot
People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events. T. S. Eliot
You are the music while the music lasts. T.S. Eliot
Where there is no temple there shall be no homes. T. S. Eliot
If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it offers you. T.S. Eliot
Let’s not be narrow, nasty, and negative. T. S. Eliot
Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden. T.S. Eliot
April is the cruellest month. T. S. Eliot
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. 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
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
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood. T. S. Eliot
Half 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. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves. T.S. Eliot
You are the music while the music lasts. T. S. Eliot
Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity. T.S. Eliot
Humankind cannot bear very much reality. T. S. Eliot
These fragments I have shored against my ruins. T.S. Eliot
If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are? 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 emotion know what it means to want to escape from these. 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
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. T.S. Eliot
I am an Anglo Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature and a royalist in politics. T. S. Eliot
Success is relative. It is what we make of the mess we have made of things. 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
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, and I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, and in short, I was afraid. 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
I must tell you that I should really like to think there’s something wrong with me Because, if there isn’t, then there’s something wrong with the world itself and that’s much more frightening! That would be terrible. So I’d rather believe there is something wrong with me, that could be put right. 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
Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair. 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
There is one who remembers the way to your door Life you may evade, but Death you shall not. 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
We had the experience but missed the meaning. And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form. 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
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
Art never improves, but the material of art is never quite the same. T. S. Eliot
Teach us to care and not to care. 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
I love reading another reader’s list of favorites. Even when I find I do not share their tastes or predilections, I am provoked to compare, contrast, and contradict. It is a most healthy exercise, and one altogether fruitful. T.S. Eliot
