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Home
Authors
T. S. Eliot
American
Poet
About the author
Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Creativity
#Anxiety
The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Right
#Reason
#Wrong
#Temptation
#Deed
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Poets
I am an Anglo-Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature and a royalist in politics.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Religion
#Literature
#Politics
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,
American
Poet
#Emotions
#Poetry
#Business
#Feelings
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Reality
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,
American
Poet
#Life
#Age
I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Death
#Thought
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Life
#Coffee
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Will
#Fear
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,
American
Poet
#Being
#Mother
#Baby
#Desire
#Hatred
In my beginning is my end.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#End
#Beginning
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.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Light
#Passion
#Blind
#Obvious
It is only in the world of objects that we have time and space and selves.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Time
#World
#Space
It's not wise to violate rules until you know how to observe them.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Rules
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,
American
Poet
#Words
#Struggle
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,
American
Poet
#Knowledge
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,
American
Poet
#Want
#Emotions
#Expression
#Poetry
#Personality
#Emotion
The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Unconscious
If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
Let's not be narrow, nasty, and negative.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Negative
So the lover must struggle for words.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Words
#Struggle
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,
American
Poet
#Time
#People
#Television
#Entertainment
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,
American
Poet
#Time
#Being
#May
#Poetry
#Feelings
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Writers
#Editors
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,
American
Poet
#Public
#Blood
People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#People
#Nothing
#Events
Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Respect
#Literature
#Praise
Our difficulties of the moment must always be dealt with somehow, but our permanent difficulties are difficulties of every moment.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Difficulties
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Will
#Risk
O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart: for the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Heart
#Man
#Intention
My greatest trouble is getting the curtain up and down.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Trouble
Poetry should help, not only to refine the language of the time, but to prevent it from changing too rapidly.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Time
#Language
#Help
#Poetry
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,
American
Poet
#Will
#World
#Man
#Old
Home is where one starts from.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Home
Where there is no temple there shall be no homes.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Temple
The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Self
#Progress
#Artist
#Personality
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,
American
Poet
#Life
#Information
#Living
#Knowledge
#Wisdom
The soul is so far from being a monad that we have not only to interpret other souls to ourself but to interpret ourself to ourself.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Being
#Soul
The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#New year
This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#World
There is no method but to be very intelligent.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
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,
American
Poet
#Time
#Will
#End
#First
#Exploration
This love is silent.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Love
Where is all the knowledge we lost with information?
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Information
#Knowledge
You are the music while the music lasts.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Music
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,
American
Poet
#Want
#People
#World
#Interest
#Harm
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,
American
Poet
#End
#Beginning
April is the cruellest month.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#April
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,
American
Poet
#Religion
#Literature
There is no absolute point of view from which real and ideal can be finally separated and labelled.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
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,
American
Poet
#Character
#Public
#Facts
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,
American
Poet
#Time
#Life
#Nothing
#Career
#May
#Poetry
#Value
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Poetry
A toothache, or a violent passion, is not necessarily diminished by our knowledge of its causes, its character, its importance or insignificance.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Character
#Passion
#Knowledge
#Importance
#Causes
And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Being
#Books
The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Language
#Living
#Communication
#Fire
The Nobel is a ticket to one's own funeral. No one has ever done anything after he got it.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
The most important thing for poets to do is to write as little as possible.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Poets
The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Work
#First
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,
American
Poet
#Will
#Emotions
#Literary
Art never improves, but... the material of art is never quite the same.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Art
Business today consists in persuading crowds.
T. S. Eliot,
American
Poet
#Today
#Business
#Crowds
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,
American
Poet
#Experience
#Paradox
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,
American
Poet
#Time
#Play
#First