T.S. Eliot Quotes

And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

A book is not harmless merely because no one is consciously offended by it.

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

Ash on an old man's sleeve / Is all the ash the burnt roses leave, / Dust in the air suspended / Marks the place where a story ended.

Sister, mother And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea, Suffer me not to be separated And let my cry come unto Thee.

It is never too late to be who you want to be.

Keep true, never be ashamed of doing right.

Love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object, and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery.

... the true seeing is within; and painting stares at you with an insistent imperfection.

Men and women are but children of a larger growth.

Human experience is usually paradoxical.

The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious.

A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything)

If we all were judged according to the consequences Of all our words and deeds, beyond the intention And beyond our limited understanding Of ourselves and others, we should all be condemned.

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.

There's good chances and bad chances, and nobody's luck is pulled only by one string.

To think of the part one little woman can play in the life of a man, so that to renounce her may be a very good imitation of heroism, and to win her may be a discipline.

To men of a certain type The suspicion that they are incapable of loving Is as disturbing to their self-esteem As, in cruder men, the fear of impotence.

A woman mixed of such fine elements That were all virtue and religion dead She'd make them newly, being what she was.

The early months of marriage often are times of critical tumult,--whether that of a shrimp pool or of deeper water,--which afterwards subside into cheerful peace.

No big modern war has been won without preponderant sea power; and, conversely, very few rebellions of maritime provinces have succeeded without acquiring sea power.

The vainest woman is never thoroughly conscious of her beauty till she is loved by the man who sets her own passion vibrating in return.

Artistic inevitability lies in the complete adequacy of the external to the emotion.

Until every good man is brave, we must expect to find many good women timid--too timid even to believe in the correctness of their own best promptings, when these would place them in a minority.

Love is frightened at the intervals of insensibility and callousness that encroach by little and little on the domain of grief, and it makes efforts to recall the keenness of the first anguish.

That golden sky, which was the doubly blessed symbol of advancing day and of approaching rest.

In spite of all the dishonour, the broken standards, the broken lives, The broken faith in one place or another, There was something left that was more than the tales Of old men on winter evenings.

We fight to keep something alive rather than in the expectation that anything will triumph.

There is no feeling, perhaps, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music,--that does not make a man sing or play the better.

Melodies die out, like the pipe of Pan, with the ears that love them and listen for them.

Speech is but broken light upon the depth Of the unspoken.

Where you have friends you should not go to inns.

April is the cruellest month.

Tis a petty kind of fame At best, that comes of making violins; And saves no masses, either. Thou wilt go To purgatory none the less.

When you see fair hair Be pitiful.

Anger seek it prey,-- Something to tear with sharp-edged tooth and claw, Like not to go off hungry, leaving Love To feast on milk and honeycomb at will.

All things journey: sun and moon, Morning, noon, and afternoon, Night and all her stars; 'Twixt the east and western bars Round they journey, Come and go! We go with them!

For I have known them all already, known them all— Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

You have learned enough to see that cats are much like you and me.

We are not apt to fear for the fearless, when we are companions in their danger.

Mysterious haunts of echoes old and far, The voice divine of human loyalty.

The dew-bead Gem of earth and sky begotten.

Childhood has no forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.

A man deep-wounded may feel too much pain To feel much anger.

Uncorseted, her friendly bust Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.

A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions Guides us by vanities.

I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me, I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me.

Half the sorrows of women would be averted if they could repress the speech they know to be useless-nay, the speech they have resolved not to utter.

The Nobel is a ticket to one's own funeral. No one has ever done anything after he got it.