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T. S. Eliot Quotes - Page 5

All Quotes Adventure Age Aging Ambition Appreciation Art Atheism Attitude Awareness Birth Children Choices Christianity Church Coffee Communication Confusion Country Creation Criticism Culture Dance Dancing Darkness Death Desire Destiny Discipline Dying Evil Experience Faith Fear Feelings Fighting Food Funny Genius Giving Graduation Greatness Heart History Home Hope House Humanity Humility Ignorance Imagination Inspiration Inspirational Inspiring Journey Judging Justice Knowledge Labor Language Laughter Life Literature Loneliness Love Lying Meditation Memories Morning Motivational Mountain Music New Beginnings Pain Passion Past Peace Personality Philosophy Poetry Progress Purpose Rain Reading Reality Religion Risk Running Silence Simplicity Singing Soul Spring Struggle Success Suffering Talent Tea Time Tradition Understanding Vision Waiting War Winter Work Writing

Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter.

Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter.

Love, Life, Romantic

1940 Four Quartets,'East Coker', pt.5.

not fare well, but fare forward

Wells

Four Quartets "The Dry Salvages" pt. 3 (1941)

Time past and time future allow but a little consciousness. To be conscious is not to be in time.

Past, Littles, Consciousness

1935 Four Quartets,'Burnt Norton', pt.2.

In life there is not time to grieve long.

Grief, Grieving, Long

T. S. Eliot (2014). “The Complete Plays of T. S. Eliot”, p.49, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates.

Inspirational, Men, Artist

The Sacred Wood "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (1920)

People are only influenced in the direction in which they want to go, and influence consists largely in making them conscious of their wishes to proceed in that direction.

People, Wish, Want

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Light, Generosity, Dancing

1940 Four Quartets,'East Coker', pt.1.

It is obvious that we can no more explain a passion to a person who has never experienced it than we can explain light to the blind.

Love, Inspirational, Life

"Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F.H. Bradley". Book by T. S. Eliot, ch. 1, Columbia University Press (quoting Doctoral dissertation in philosophy; submitted to Harvard in 1916), 1964.

It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous. Resign yourself to be the fool you are... ...We must always take risks. That is our destiny.

Destiny, Risk, Finding Yourself

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

Death, Different, Birth

"Journey of the Magi" l. 35 (1927)

We can say of Shakespeare, that never has a man turned so little knowledge to such great account.

Knowledge, Men, Littles

In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing

Singing, Moonlight, Grass

1922 The Waste Land, pt.5,'What the Thunder Said'.

Everyone's alone - or so it seems to me. They make noises, and think they are talking to each other; They make faces, and think they understand each other. And I'm sure they don't. Is that a delusion?

Loneliness, Thinking, Talking

T. S. Eliot (2014). “Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950”, p.369, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

With a poem you can say 'I got my feeling into words for myself. I now have the equivalent in words for that much of what I have felt.'

Feelings, Felt

It is impossible to design a system so perfect that no one needs to be good.

Perfect, Design, Needs

What is this self-inside us, this silent observer, severe and speechless critic, who can terrorize us, and urge us onto futile activity, and in the end, judge us still more severely for the errors into which his own reproaches drove us?

Errors, Self, Judging

Our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves, and of our visible, sensible world.

World, Sensible, Constant

I must tell you that I should really like to think there's something wrong with me- Because, if there isn't, then there's something wrong with the world itself-and that's much more frightening! That would be terrible. So I'd rather believe there is something wrong with me, that could be put right.

Believe, Thinking, Would Be

T.S. Eliot (2011). “The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot”, p.400, Faber & Faber

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you Which shall be the darkness of God. . . . So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Inspirational, Dark, Light

T.S. Eliot (2011). “The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot”, p.162, Faber & Faber

What we know of other people's only our memory of the moments during which we knew them.

Memories, People, Cocktail Parties

T. S. Eliot (2014). “Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950”, p.338, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

A thousand policemen directing traffic cannot tell you why you come or where you go.

Urban, Planning, Traffic

No generation is interested in art in quite the same way as any other; each generation, like each individual, brings to the contemplation of art its own categories of appreciation, makes its own demands upon art, and has its own uses for art.

Appreciation, Art, Generations

T. S. Eliot (1986). “The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism: Studies in the Relation of Criticism to Poetry in England”, p.101, Harvard University Press

One thing you cannot know: The sudden extinction of every alternative, The unexpected crash of the iron cataract. You do not know what hope is, until you have lost it. You only know what it is not to hope: You do not know what it is to have hope taken from you Or to fling it away, to join the legion of the hopeless Unrecognized by other men, though sometimes by each other.

Hope, Taken, Men

T.S. Eliot (2011). “The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot”, p.290, Faber & Faber

You will find that you survive humiliation. And that's an experience of incalculable value.

Motivational, Thought Provoking, Humiliation

T.S. Eliot (2011). “The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot”, p.348, Faber & Faber

Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past Into different lives, or into any future; You are not the same people who left that station Or who will arrive at any terminus, While the narrowing rails slide together behind you.

Time, Past, Escaping

T.S. Eliot (2011). “The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot”, p.170, Faber & Faber

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