T. S. Eliot quotes

T. S. Eliot was a renowned poet, essayist, and playwright of the 20th century, celebrated for works like "The Waste Land" and "Four Quartets". His innovative use of language and exploration of modern themes had a profound influence on English literature. He became a central figure in literary modernism and won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Here are 333 of his quotes:

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

T. S. Eliot

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

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 emotion know what it means to want to escape from these.

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

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

April is the cruellest month.

T. S. Eliot

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

T. S. Eliot

The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.

T. S. Eliot

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

T. S. Eliot

If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?

T. S. Eliot

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter, It isn't just one of your holiday games; You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.

T. S. Eliot

Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow.

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

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

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

T. S. Eliot

You are the music while the music lasts.

T. S. Eliot

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

T. S. Eliot

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

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

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

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.

T. S. Eliot

It's not wise to violate rules until you know how to observe them.

T. S. Eliot