42 Stupendous T. S. Eliot Quotes
Thomas Stearns Eliot (born September 26, 1888, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. – died January 4, 1965, London, England), known as T. S. Eliot, was an American-English poet and playwright, considered one of the most influential poets of 20th-century.
As a leader of the Modernist movement in poetry, he wrote some of the best-known poems in the English language, including The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915), The Waste Land (1922), Ash Wednesday (1930), and Four Quartets (1943).
In addition to poems, Eliot also wrote plays and essays. Most notable are Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919), Murder in the Cathedral (1935), and The Cocktail Party (1949).
In 1948, Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry.”
We have gathered all the best T. S. Eliot quotations and sayings, including Eliot’s quotes on poetry, love, life, death, dreams, exploration, and coffee.
Table of Contents
T. S. Eliot Famous Quotes
April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.The Waste Land (1922), Section I. The Burial of the Dead, Page 9
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.The Waste Land (1922), Section I. The Burial of the Dead, Page 12
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.Four Quartets (ed. Harcourt, 1943), Poem IV. Little Gidding (1942), Page 59
The Church must be forever building, and always decaying, and always being restored.The Rock (ed. Harcourt, 1934), Part I, Page 20
War is not a life: it is a situation, one which may neither be ignored nor accepted, a problem to be met with ambush and stratagem, enveloped or scattered.A Note on War Poetry (1942)
The lot of man is ceaseless labour, or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder.The Rock (ed. Harcourt, 1934), Part I, Page 8
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.Time Magazine (October 23, 1950)
The awful daring of a moment’s surrender which an age of prudence can never retract by this, and this only, we have existed.The Waste Land (1922), Section V. What the Thunder Said, Page 46
Human kind cannot bear very much reality.Murder in the Cathedral (ed. Faber & Faber, 1935), Part II, Page 66
Men have left GOD not for other gods, they say, but for no God; and this has never happened before.The Rock (ed. Harcourt, 1934), Part II, Page 51
Only by acceptance of the past will you alter its meaning.The Cocktail Party (ed. Faber & Faber, 1950), Act III, Page 165
It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous. Resign yourself to be the fool you are.The Cocktail Party (ed. Faber & Faber, 1950), Act I, Scene 1, Page 27
The circle of our understanding is a very restricted area.The Family Reunion (1939), (ed. Faber & Faber, 1950), Part II, Scene III, Page 133
Two people who know they do not understand each other, breeding children whom they do not understand and who will never understand them.The Cocktail Party (ed. Faber & Faber, 1950), Act II, Page 123
In a play from the beginning you have to realize that you’re preparing something which is going into the hands of other people, unknown at the time you’re writing it.The Art of Poetry No. 1, The Paris Review (Spring-Summer, 1959)
Only the fool, fixed in his folly, may think he can turn the wheel on which he turns.Murder in the Cathedral (ed. Faber & Faber, 1935), Part I, Page 24
Success is relative: It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.The Family Reunion (1939), (ed. Faber & Faber, 1950), Part II, Scene III, Page 118
Ambition fortifies the will of man to become ruler over other men: it operates with deception, cajolery, and violence, it is the action of impurity upon impurity.Murder in the Cathedral (ed. Faber & Faber, 1935), Interlude, Page 49
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What is hell? 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.The Cocktail Party (ed. Faber & Faber, 1950), Act I, Scene 3, Page 87
Our difficulties of the moment must always be dealt with somehow, but our permanent difficulties are difficulties of every moment.The Idea of a Christian Society (ed. Faber & Faber, 1939), Chapter I, Page 7
We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion.A Dialogue on Dramatic Poetry (1928)
People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events.The Family Reunion (1939), (ed. Faber & Faber, 1950), Part I, Scene II, Page 28
Unreal friendship may turn to real but real friendship, once ended, cannot be mended.Murder in the Cathedral (ed. Faber & Faber, 1935), Part I, Page 31
T. S. Eliot Poetry Quotes
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.Dante (ed. Faber & Faber, 1929), Chapter I. A reading of The Inferno, Page 16
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.Pfilip Massinger (1920)
The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious.Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)
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.Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)
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.Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)
T. S. Eliot Quotes on Life
To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (ed. Faber & Faber, 1933), I. Introduction, Page 13
If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, you must accept the terms it offers you.The Confidential Clerk (ed. Harcourt, 1954), Act I, Page 43
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?The Rock (ed. Harcourt, 1934), Part I, Page 7
T. S. Eliot Quotes about Time
Do I dare disturb the universe? In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
In life there is not time to grieve long.Murder in the Cathedral (ed. Faber & Faber, 1935), Part II, Page 75
You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure, that time is no healer: the patient is no longer here.Four Quartets (ed. Harcourt, 1943), Poem III. The Dry Salvages (1941), Page 41
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.Four Quartets (ed. Harcourt, 1943), Poem IV. Little Gidding (1942), Page 58
