100 TS Eliot Quotes and Lines to Give You New Insights In Life

TS Eliot Famous Quotes

Check some of the TS Eliot quotes that are quite famous.

• "The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man."

• "It’s not wise to violate rules until you know how to observe them."

• "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."

• "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."

• "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."

• "Unreal friendship may turn to real. But real friendship, once ended, cannot be mended."

• "O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart: for the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked."

• "If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?"

• "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."

• "People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events."

• "There is not a more repulsive spectacle than on old man who will not forsake the world, which has already forsaken him."

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

• "I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope, For hope would be hope for the wrong thing."

• "The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living."

• "Whatever you think, be sure it is what you think; whatever you want, be sure that is what you want; whatever you feel, be sure that is what you feel."

• "April is the cruellest month."

• "We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion."

• "The most important thing for poets to do is to write as little as possible."

• "We must always take risks. That is our destiny."

• "Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers."

• "Business today consists in persuading crowds."

• "It’s strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words."

• "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal."

• "Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood."

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

Quotes by TS Eliot

More TS Eliot quotes are here.  

• "If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it offers you."

• "To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life."

• "Men live by forgetting and woman live on memories."

• "What is true, is true only for one time and only for one place."

• "The definition of hell is a place where nothing connects with nothing."

• "Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair."

• "The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first."

• "My name is only an anagram of toilets."

• "My mind may be American but my heart is British."

• "Your burden is not to clear your conscience but to learn how to bear the burdens on your conscience."

• "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."

• "Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act, falls the Shadow."

• "Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third."

• "Poetry is not an assertion of truth, but the making of that truth more fully real to us."

• "In the mountains, there you feel free."

• "Everyone gets the experience. Some get the lesson."

• "Every moment is a fresh beginning."

• "I will show you fear in a handful of dust."

• "Half 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."

• "Neither way is better. Both ways are necessary. It is also necessary to make a choice between them."

• "For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice."

• "There will be time, there will be time to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet."

• "Turn things you've always wanted to do, into things you've done."

• "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons."

• "The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink."

• "Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger. Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions."

TS Eliot Love Quotes

Below are some TS Eliot quotes that talk about love."

• "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."

• "Wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing."

• "Oh my dear, I love you to the limits of speech, and beyond."

• "But there’s no vocabulary for love within a family, love that’s lived in."

• "This love is silent."

• "Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other, who think the same thoughts without need of speech and babble the same speech without need of meaning."

• "It's strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words."

• "Do you huddle close together because you love each other?"

• "Love is most nearly itself when here and now cease to matter."

TS Eliot Quotes on Death

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Make you think about our life, these are some TS Eliot quotes on death.

• "We don't actually fear death, we fear that no one will notice our absence, that we will disappear without a trace."

• "I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different."

• "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."

• "This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper."

• "I had not thought death had undone so many."

• "I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different."

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

• "It takes so many years to learn that one is dead."

• "It is worth while dying, to find out what life is."

• "There are flood and drought over the eyes and in the mouth, dead water and dead sand contending for the upper hand. The parched eviscerate soil gapes at the vanity of toil, laughs without mirth. This is the death of the earth."

• "My life is light, waiting for the death wind, Like a feather on the back of my hand."

• "Cold Mountain Buddhas Han Shan Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness be dancing. Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning. The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry, The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony Of death and birth."

• "Webster was much possessed by death And saw the skull beneath the skin."

• "The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living."

• "Death has a hundred hands and walks by a thousand ways."

• "There is one who remembers the way to your door: Life you may evade, but Death you shall not."

All these TS Eliot quotes are awesome. After reading it, we hope these 100 quotes will bring a new perspective to your life and motivate you to become as great as him!