T. S. Eliot Quotes
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It is not enough to understand what we ought to be, unless we know what we are; and we do not understand what we are, unless we know what we ought to be.
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To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not / You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
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I say to you: Make perfect your will. / I say: take no thought of the harvest, / But only of proper sowing.
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Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought.
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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.
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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
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We can at least try to understand our own motives, passions, and prejudices, so as to be conscious of what we are doing when we apeal to those of others. This is very difficult, because our own prejudice and emotional bias always seems to us so rational.
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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?
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People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events.
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Who is the third who walks always beside you When I count, there are only you and I together But when I look ahead up the white road There is always another one walking beside you
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Because I cannot hope to turn again Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something Upon which to rejoice
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There is not a more repulsive spectacle than on old man who will not forsake the world, which has already forsaken him.
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There is no absolute point of view from which real and ideal can be finally separated and labelled.
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Between the ideaAnd the realityBetween the motionAnd the actFalls the Shadow
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Ash on an old man's sleeve / Is all the ash the burnt roses leave, / Dust in the air suspended / Marks the place where a story ended.
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Atheism should always be encouraged (i.e. rationalistic not emotional atheism) for the sake of the Faith.
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I am no prophet - and here's no great matter; 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.
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I think it was rather an advantage not having any living poets in England or America in whom one took any particular interest. I don't know what it would be like but I think it would be a rather troublesome distraction to have such a lot of dominating presences, as you call them, about. Fortunately we weren't bothered by each other.
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Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
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When the Stranger says: 'What is the meaning of this city ? Do you huddle close together because you love each other?' What will you answer? 'We all dwell together To make money from each other'? or 'This is a community'?
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No scheme for a change of society can be made to appear immediately palatable, except by falsehood, until society has become so desperate that it will accept any change.
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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.
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I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different.
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Each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling.