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T. S. Eliot Quotes about Life

All T. S. Eliot 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 quotes 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

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

Inspirational, Life, Motivational

T.S. Eliot (2015). “The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I: Collected and Uncollected Poems”, p.1250, Faber & Faber

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.

Inspirational, Funny, Life

Four Quartets "Little Gidding" pt. 5 (1942)

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

Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

T. S. Eliot (1986). “The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism: Studies in the Relation of Criticism to Poetry in England”, p.3, Harvard University Press

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?

Life, Wisdom, Knowledge

"Choruses from the Rock" pt. 1 (1934)

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

Inspirational, Life, Motivational

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

Life, Fake People, Peace

Can we only love Something created in our own imaginations? Are we all in fact unloving and unloveable? Then one is alone, and if one is alone Then lover and beloved are equally unreal And the dreamer is no more real than his dreams.

Life, Dream, Real

You can evade life, but you can not evade Death.

Life, Life Death, Can Not

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

Love, Life, Romantic

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

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.

Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter. Old men ought to be explorers Here or there does not matter We must be still and still moving Into another intensity For a further union, a deeper communion Through the dark cold and the empty desolation, The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters Of the petrel and the porpoise.

Life, Moving, Dark

T.S. Eliot (2016). “Cuatro cuartetos: Precedido por La roca y Asesinato en la Catedral”, p.99, LUMEN

Any religion is forever in danger of petrifaction into mere ritual and habit, though ritual and habit be essential to religion.

Inspirational, Life, Forever

T. S. Eliot (2014). “Selected Essays”, p.396, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

Life, Success, Coffee

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" l. 51 (1917)

The fool,fixed in his folly,may think He can turn the wheel on which he turns.

Life, Thinking, May

T.S. Eliot (2011). “The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot”, p.229, Faber & Faber

It seems just possible that a poem might happen to a very young man: but a poem is not poetry -That is a life.

Life, Men, Might

Can we only love Something created in our own imaginations?

Life, Imagination, Only Love

T. S. Eliot (2014). “The Complete Plays of T. S. Eliot”, p.189, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Love is the unfamiliar Name Behind the hands that wove The intolerable shirt of flame Which human power cannot remove.

Life, Love Is, Flames

Four Quartets "Little Gidding" pt. 4 (1942)

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

Life, Death, Dying

Sweeney Agonistes (1932)

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.

Life, Pain, Light

T. S. Eliot (2014). “Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950”, p.122, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours.

Life, New Year, Spring

T. S. Eliot (2014). “The Waste Land and Other Poems”, p.27, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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

Life, Death, Light

T. S. Eliot (2014). “Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950”, p.78, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a taxi throbbing waiting I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives.

Life, Eye, Two

'The Waste Land' (1922) pt. 3

Desire itself is movement Not in itself desirable; Love is itself unmoving, Only the cause and end of movement, Timeless, and undesiring Except in the aspect of time Caught in the form of limitation Between un-being and being.

Life, Love Is, Desire

T.S. Eliot (2009). “Collected Poems 1909-1962”, p.161, Faber & Faber

Lady of silences Calm and distressed Torn and most whole Rose of memory Rose of forgetfulness Exhausted and life-giving Worried reposeful The single Rose Is now the Garden Where all loves end Terminate torment Of love unsatisfied The greater torment Of love satisfied End of the endless Journey to no end Conclusion of all that Is inconclusible Speech without word and Word of no speech Grace to the Mother For the Garden Where all love ends.

Life, Mother, Memories

T. S. Eliot (2014). “Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950”, p.71, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance

Inspirational, Life, Dancing

T.S. Eliot (2015). “The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I: Collected and Uncollected Poems”, p.181, Faber & Faber

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