T.S. Eliot Quotes

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music.

There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life.

I think what we call the dullness of things is a disease in ourselves. Else how could anyone find an intense interest in life? And many do.

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.

cross that person off your invitation list.

There is a sort of subjection which is the peculiar heritage of largeness and of love; and strength is often only another name for willing bondage to irremediable weakness.

Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.

The remarkable thing about television is that it permits several million people to laugh at the same joke and still feel lonely.

Souls have complexions too: what will suit one will not suit another

Any religion is forever in danger of petrifaction into mere ritual and habit, though ritual and habit be essential to religion.

Enveloped in a common mist, we seem to walk in clearness ourselves, and behold only the mist that enshrouds others.

not fare well, but fare forward

The majority of poems one outgrows and outlives, as one outgrows and outlives the majority of human passions.

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.

To each individual the world will take on a different connotation of meaning-the important lies in the desire to search for an answer.

An historian should yield himself to his subject, become immersed in the place and period of his choice, standing apart from it now and then for a fresh view.

Human kind cannot bear much reality.

Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity.

I think we are in rats’ alley Where the dead men lost their bones.

The cruel policy initiated by Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete genocide.

Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts—not to hurt others.

We want people to feel with us more than to act for us.

Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.

America was named after a man who discovered no part of the New World. History is like that, very chancy.

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.

Envy is everywhere. Who is without envy? And most people Are unaware or unashamed of being envious.

Taking the question in general, I should say, in the case of many poets, that the most important thing for them to do ... is to write as little as possible

I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids Sprouting despondently at area gates.

They don't understand what it is to be awake, / To be living on several planes at once / Though one cannot speak with several voices at once.

All time is eternal, moving inexorably toward an end which we believe is a result of our actions, but over which our control is mere illusion.

Mighty is the force of motherhood! It transforms all things by its vital heat.

Sometimes in politics, you think you've seen it all. Turns out I was wrong.

To country people Cows are mild, And flee from any stick they throw; But I’m a timid town bred child, And all the cattle seem to know.

Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.

Adult stem cells are also problematic, as they are difficult to identify, purify and grow, and simply may not exist for certain diseased tissues that need to be replaced.

Life is measured by the rapidity of change, the succession of influences that modify the being.

It's not wise to violate rules until you know how to observe them.

If one has to earn a living, therefore, the safest occupation is that most remote from the arts.

Never commit yourself to a cheese without having first examined it.

There is, it seems to us, At best, only a limited value In the knowledge derived from experience.

Art never improves, but... the material of art is never quite the same.

The tread Of coming footsteps cheats the midnight watcher Who holds her heart and waits to hear them pause, And hears them never pause, but pass and die.

We read many books, because we cannot know enough people.

Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.

One couldn't carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything has been said better than we can put it ourselves.

I should have been a pair of ragged claws/ Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

You are a good young man," she said. "But I do not like husbands. I will never have another.

All time is unreedemable.