Quotes by Eliot, T. S.

Thomas Stearns Eliot, OM (September 26, 1888 - January 4, 1965) was a poet, dramatist and literary critic, whose works, such as The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, "The Hollow Men", and Four Quartets, are considered defining achievements of twentieth century Modernist poetry. The winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948, he is considered one of the most influential poets of the 20th century. Although he was born an American, he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at age 25) and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39..

"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."

Eliot, T. S. on age and aging
5 fans of this quote

"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."

Eliot, T. S. on age and aging
7 fans of this quote

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

Eliot, T. S. on deeds and good deeds
7 fans of this quote

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

Eliot, T. S. on editing and editors

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

Eliot, T. S. on editing and editors
4 fans of this quote

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

Eliot, T. S. on emotions
6 fans of this quote

"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."

Eliot, T. S. on evil
6 fans of this quote

"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."

Eliot, T. S. on exploration
9 fans of this quote

"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."

Eliot, T. S. on famine

"I will show you fear in a handful of dust."

Eliot, T. S. on fear
4 fans of this quote

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"Liberty is a different kind of pain from prison."

Eliot, T. S. on freedom
3 fans of this quote

"Friendship should be more than biting time can sever."

Eliot, T. S. on friends and friendship
4 fans of this quote

"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."

Eliot, T. S. on futility

"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons."

Eliot, T. S. on futility
8 fans of this quote

"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."

Eliot, T. S. on hell
6 fans of this quote

"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."

Eliot, T. S. on importance

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

Eliot, T. S. on impulse

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

Eliot, T. S. on indecision
3 fans of this quote

"People exercise an unconscious selection in being influenced."

Eliot, T. S. on influence

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

Eliot, T. S. on information
3 fans of this quote

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

Eliot, T. S. on insanity
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"The dream crossed twilight between birth and dying."

Eliot, T. S. on life
4 fans of this quote

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

Eliot, T. S. on life

"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."

Eliot, T. S. on literature

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

Eliot, T. S. on love
8 fans of this quote

"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."

Eliot, T. S. on art

"There is no method but to be very intelligent."

Eliot, T. S. on methods

"You are the music while the music lasts."

Eliot, T. S. on music
12 fans of this quote

"We do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test of its value -- a test, it is true, which can only be slowly and cautiously applied, for we are none of us infallible judges of conformity."

Eliot, T. S. on novelty

"All cases are unique and very similar to others."

Eliot, T. S. on originality
3 fans of this quote

"Only by acceptance of the past, can you alter it."

Eliot, T. S. on past
13 fans of this quote

"Think not forever of yourselves, O Chiefs, nor of your own generation. Think of continuing generations of our families, think of our grandchildren and of those yet unborn, whose faces are coming from beneath the ground."

Eliot, T. S. on peace
3 fans of this quote

"What we know of other people's only our memory of the moments during which we knew them."

Eliot, T. S. on people
4 fans of this quote

"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."

Eliot, T. S. on plays
3 fans of this quote

"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 we have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these things."

Eliot, T. S. on poetry and poets
3 fans of this quote

"When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experiences."

Eliot, T. S. on poetry and poets

"We must believe that emotion recollected in tranquillity is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration of a very great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not recollected and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is tranquil only in that it is a passive attending upon the event."

Eliot, T. S. on poetry and poets

"It seems just possible that a poem might happen to a very young man: but a poem is not poetry --That is a life."

Eliot, T. S. on poetry and poets

"I take as metaphysical poetry that in which what is ordinarily apprehensible only by thought is brought within the grasp of feeling, or that in which what is ordinarily only felt is transformed into thought without ceasing to be feeling."

Eliot, T. S. on poetry and poets

"Each venture is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate with shabby equipment always deteriorating in the general mess of imprecision of feeling."

Eliot, T. S. on poetry and poets

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