T.S. Eliot Quotes

In travelling I shape myself betimes to idleness And take fools' pleasure

Yeats was the greatest poet of our times . . . certainly the greatest in this language, and so far as I am able to judge, in any language.

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

And all shall be well and/ All manner of thing shall be well/ By the purification of the motive/ In the ground of our beseeching

He had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it

In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo.

It is only in the world of objects that we have time and space and selves.

Knowledge is invariably a matter of degree: you cannot put your finger upon even the simplest datum and say this we know.

The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.

I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

And when a woman's will is as strong as the man's who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment.

It's no use filling your pocket with money if you have got a hole in the corner.

Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.

It is very hard to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings – much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.

The desire to conquer is itself a sort of subjection.

Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.

One starts an action simply because one must do something.

Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.

In my beginning is my end.

Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.

It's easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient.

Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities.

We all remember epochs in our experience when some dear expectation dies, or some new motive is born.

Those who trust us educate us.

If art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally.

Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance

We had the experience but missed the meaning. And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form.

There will be time to murder and create.

Children demand that their heroes should be fleckless, and easily believe them so .

For character too is a process and an unfolding. . . among our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little too self confident and disdainful. . . .

The soul of Man must quicken to creation.

Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still.

Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?'/Let us go and make our visit.

With out some kind of god, man is not very intresting

Only through time time is conquered

Hear Everything and judge for yourself

People who can't be witty exert themselves to be devout and affectionate.

Plain women he regarded as he did the other severe facts of life, to be faced with philosophy and investigated by science.

I say to you: Make perfect your will. / I say: take no thought of the harvest, / But only of proper sowing.

Tennyson and Browning are poets, and they think; but they do not feel their thought as immediately as the odour of a rose. A thought to Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility.

In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.

It's them as take advantage that get advantage I' this world, I think: folks have to wait long enough afore it's brought to 'em.

Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance!

But most of us are apt to settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is odious, and not to mind causing him a little of the disgust which his personality excites in ourselves.

A tradition without intelligence is not worth having.

War among men defiles this world.

It was not that she was out of temper, but that the world was not equal to the demands of her fine organism.

His laughter tinkled among the teacups.

One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen's miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.