Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
– T. S. Eliot
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.
– TSEliot
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.
– TSEliot
This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.
– TSEliot
Footfalls echo in the memoryDown the passage which we did not takeTowards the door we never openedInto the rose-garden. My words echoThus, in your mind.
– TSEliot
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind Cannot bear very much reality. Time past and time future What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present.
– TSEliot
April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory out of desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in a forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers.
– TSEliot
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.
– T. S. Eliot
An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.
– T. S. Eliot
And we must think no further of you.
– T. S. Eliot
Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity.
– T. S. Eliot
Any poet, if he is to survive beyond his 25th year, must alter; he must seek new literary influences; he will have different emotions to express.
– T. S. Eliot
April is the cruellest month.
– T. S. Eliot
As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.
– T. S. Eliot
At twenty you have many desires which hide the truth, but beyond forty there are only real and fragile truths -your abilities and your failings.
– T. S. Eliot
Business today consists in persuading crowds.
– T. S. Eliot
Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage which we did not take, towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden.
– T. S. Eliot
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
– T. S. Eliot
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
– T. S. Eliot
Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them.
– T. S. Eliot
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
– T. S. Eliot
I am an Anglo-Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature and a royalist in politics.
– T. S. Eliot
I don't believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates.
– T. S. Eliot
I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different.
– T. S. Eliot
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
– T. S. Eliot
I must say Bernard Shaw is greatly improved by music.
– T. S. Eliot
If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?
– T. S. Eliot
If you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human being can pour out for you, let a young mother hear you call dear baby it.
– T. S. Eliot
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
– T. S. Eliot
In my beginning is my end.
– T. S. Eliot
It's strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words.
– T. S. Eliot
Let's not be narrow, nasty, and negative.
– T. S. Eliot
My greatest trouble is getting the curtain up and down.
– T. S. Eliot
Our difficulties of the moment must always be dealt with somehow, but our permanent difficulties are difficulties of every moment.
– T. S. Eliot
Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.
– T. S. Eliot
People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events.
– T. S. Eliot
Playwriting gets into your blood and you can't stop it. At least not until the producers or the public tell you to.
– T. S. Eliot
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.
– T. S. Eliot
Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.
– T. S. Eliot
Poetry should help, not only to refine the language of the time, but to prevent it from changing too rapidly.
– T. S. Eliot
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
– T. S. Eliot
Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.
– T. S. Eliot
The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
– T. S. Eliot
The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.
– T. S. Eliot
The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.
– T. S. Eliot
The most important thing for poets to do is to write as little as possible.
– T. S. Eliot
The Nobel is a ticket to one's own funeral. No one has ever done anything after he got it.
– T. S. Eliot
There is no method but to be very intelligent.
– T. S. Eliot
There is not a more repulsive spectacle than on old man who will not forsake the world, which has already forsaken him.
– T. S. Eliot
This is the way the world ends: not with a bang, but a whimper.
– T. S. Eliot
This love is silent.
– T. S. Eliot
Twentieth-century art may start with nothing, but it flourishes by virtue of its belief in itself, in the possibility of control over what seems essentially uncontrollable, in the coherence of the inchoate, and in its ability to create its own values.
– T. S. Eliot
We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion.
– T. S. Eliot
We must be steady enough in ourselves, to be open and to let the winds of life blow through us, to be our breath, our inspiration; to breathe with them, mobile and soft in the limberness of our bodies, in our agility, our ability, as it were, to dance, and yet to stand upright.
– T. S. Eliot
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.
– T. S. Eliot
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.
– T. S. Eliot
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?
– T. S. Eliot
You are the music while the music lasts.
– T. S. Eliot
Humor is also a way of saying something serious.
– T. S. Eliot
Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.
– T. S. Eliot
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.
– T. S. Eliot
Knowledge is invariably a matter of degree: you cannot put your finger upon even the simplest datum and say this we know.
– T. S. Eliot
It is only in the world of objects that we have time and space and selves.
– T. S. Eliot
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
– T. S. Eliot
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope, For hope would be hope for the wrong thing.
– T. S. Eliot
Home is where one starts from.
– T. S. Eliot
For love would be love of the wrong thing there is yet faith, But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
– T. S. Eliot
Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself.
– T. S. Eliot
Art never improves, but... the material of art is never quite the same.
– T. S. Eliot
All significant truths are private truths. As they become public they cease to become truths they become facts, or at best, part of the public character or at worst, catchwords.
– T. S. Eliot
A toothache, or a violent passion, is not necessarily diminished by our knowledge of its causes, its character, its importance or insignificance.
