42 Stupendous T. S. Eliot Quotes
Thomas Stearns Eliot, known as T. S. Eliot, (born September 26, 1888, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. – died January 4, 1965, London, England) 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, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, “for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry.”
April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.I. The Burial of the Dead, The Waste Land (1922)
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)
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.Little Gidding (1942), Four Quartets (1943)
The Church must be forever building, and always decaying, and always being restored.Part I, The Rock (1934)
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, London Calling (1942)
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, The Sacred Wood (1920)
The lot of man is ceaseless labour, or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder.Part I, The Rock (1934)
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 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.V. What the Thunder said, The Waste Land (1922)
Men have left GOD not for other gods, they say, but for no God; and this has never happened before.Part II, The Rock (1934)
It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous. Resign yourself to be the fool you are.Act One, Scene 1, The Cocktail Party (1950)
The circle of our understanding is a very restricted area.Part II, Scene III, The Family Reunion (1939)
Two people who know they do not understand each other, breeding children whom they do not understand and who will never understand them.Act Two, The Cocktail Party (1950)
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.Little Gidding (1942), Four Quartets (1943)
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.Part I, Murder in the Cathedral (1935)
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?Part I, The Rock (1934)
To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.I. Introduction, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933)
Success is relative: It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.Part II, Scene III, The Family Reunion (1939)
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.Interlude, Murder in the Cathedral (1935)
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.Act One, Scene 3, The Cocktail Party (1950)
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)
You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure, that time is no healer: the patient is no longer here.The Dry Salvages (1941), Four Quartets (1943)
Our difficulties of the moment must always be dealt with somehow, but our permanent difficulties are difficulties of every moment.'Preface' The Idea of a Christian Society (1939)
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)
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.Part I, Scene II, The Family Reunion (1939)
Unreal friendship may turn to real but real friendship, once ended, cannot be mended.Part I, Murder in the Cathedral (1935)
If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, you must accept the terms it offers you.Act One, The Confidential Clerk (1954)