T.S. Eliot Quotes

Breed is stronger than pasture.

Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour's buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.

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

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

The sons of Judah have to choose that God may again choose them. The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory.

Wine and the sun will make vinegar without any shouting to help them.

Man cannot choose his duties.

I think there are stores laid up in our human nature that our understandings can make no complete inventory of.

But faithfulness can feed on suffering, And knows no disappointment.

Those old stories of visions and dreams guiding men have their truth; we are saved by making the future present to ourselves.

The worst of misery Is when a nature framed for noblest things Condemns itself in youth to petty joys, And, sore athirst for air, breathes scanty life Gasping from out the shallows.

To the old, sorrow is sorrow; to the young, it is despair.

A peasant can no more help believing in a traditional superstition than a horse can help trembling when be sees a camel.

To be a top performer you have to be passionately committed to what you're doing and insanely confident about your ability to pull it off.

We must not sit down and wait for miracles. Up and be going!

Anyone who strays too far from the majority view or the conventional wisdom is bound to be labeled "arrogant," "a maverick," "a Wildman," "weird," or even "crazy."

High achievers dwell on what they do well and spend very little time evaluating themselves and their performances.

The true exceptional performer is on super pilot. Every single sense, every fiber of his body is brought together in what he is doing.

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.

Never, in these United States, has the brain of man conceived, or the hand of man fashioned, so perfect a thing as a clipper ship.

Franklin may . . . be considered one of the founding fathers of American democracy, since no democratic government can last long without conciliation and compromise.

So I have cultivated the vast garden of human experience which is history, without troubling myself overmuch about laws, essential first causes, or how it is all coming out.

The same contingencies of time and space that force a statesman or soldier to make decisions, impel the historian, though with less urgency, to make up his mind.

Intellectual honesty is the quality that the public in free countries always has expected of historians; much more than that it does not expect, nor often get.

Too rigid specialization is almost as bad for a historian's mind, and for his ultimate reputation, as too early an indulgence in broad generalization and synthesis.

Friendship should be more than biting time can sever.

The young feel tired at the end of an action, the old at the beginning.

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.

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

A tradition without intelligence is not worth having.

War among men defiles this world.

I was too slow a mover to be a boxer. It was much easier to be a poet.

O father, father Gone from us, lost to us, The church lies bereft, Alone, Desecrated, desolated. And the heathen shall build On the ruins Their world without God. I see it. I see it.

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.

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

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.

The lot of man is ceaseless labor, Or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder.

In our rhythm of earthly life we tire of light. We are glad when the day ends, when the play ends; and ecstasy is too much pain.

April is the cruellest month.

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.

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

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

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

And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

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

He laughed like an irresponsible foetus.

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

Neither way is better. / Both ways are necessary. / It is also necessary / To make a choice between them.

Here between the hither and the farther shore While time is withdrawn, consider the future And the past with an equal mind.