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T. S. Eliot

174 quotes

“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 (1888–1965) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Philip Massinger", a biographical essay, in The Sacred Wood (1920)
“Atheism should always be encouraged (i.e. rationalistic not emotional atheism) for the sake of the Faith.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) first seen 1927 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Richard Aldington (24 February 1927)
“Mr. Aldous Huxley, who is perhaps one of those people who have to perpetrate thirty bad novels before producing a good one, has a certain natural — but little developed — aptitude for seriousness.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) first seen 1927 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Contemporary English Novelist", La Nouvelle Revue française (1 May 1927)
“A dangerous person to disagree with.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) first seen 1927 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Samuel Johnson, in Homage to John Dryden: Three Essays on Poetry of the Seventeenth Century (1927)
“‘A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter.’”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) first seen 1927 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Journey of the Magi" (1927)
“There were times we regretted The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces, And the silken girls bringing sherbet.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“... were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My general point of view may be described as classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and Anglo-Catholic in religion.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) first seen 1928 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface" in For Lancelot Andrewes (1928)
“It is a test (a positive test, I do not assert that it is always valid negatively), that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dante" (1929), in Selected Essays (1932), p. 238
“I am glad you have a Cat, but I do not believe it is So remarkable a cat as My Cat. My Cat is a Lilliecat Hubvously. What a lilliecat it is. There never was such a Lilliecat. Its Name is and its one Idea is to be Useful!!”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to his godson, Thomas Erle Faber (January 1931)
“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface to Transit of Venus: Poems by Harry Crosby (1931)
“It is self-evident that St. Louis affected me more deeply than any other environment has ever done. I feel that there is something in having passed one's childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those people who have not. I consider myself fortunate to have been born here, rather than in Boston, or New York, or London.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) first seen 1930 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Marquis Childs quoted in St. Louis Post Dispatch (15 October 1930) and in the address "American Literature and the American Language" delivered at Washington University (9 June 1953) published in Washington Un…
“I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) first seen 1909 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Song for Simeon", from Collected Poems, 1909-1935 (1936)
“If we take the widest and wisest view of a Cause, there is no such thing as a Lost Cause, because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause. We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat may be the preface to our successors' victory, though that victory itself will be temporary; we fight rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that it will triumph.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) first seen 1927 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Francis Herbert Bradley" (1927), in Essays Ancient and Modern (1936)
“The 'greatness' of literature cannot be determined solely by literary standards; though we must remember that whether it is literature or not can be determined only by literary standards.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Religion and Literature" (1935), in Essays Ancient and Modern (1936)
“When we read of human beings behaving in certain ways, with the approval of the author, who gives his benediction to this behavior by his attitude towards the result of the behavior arranged by himself, we can be influenced towards behaving in the same way.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Religion and Literature" (1935), in Essays Ancient and Modern (1936)
“It is certain that a book is not harmless merely because no one is consciously offended by it.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Religion and Literature" (1935), in Essays Ancient and Modern (1936)
“The division between those who accept, and those who deny, Christian revelation I take to be the most profound division between human beings.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Revelation" (1937), in The Idea of a Christian Society and Other Writings (London: Faber and Faber, 1982), p. 168
“No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job.…Poetry…remains one person talking to another....no poet can write a poem of amplitude unless he is the master of the prosaic.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) first seen 1942 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Music of Poetry (24 February 1942) the third W. P. Ker memorial lecture delivered in the University of Glasgow
“Long ago I studied the ancient Indian languages, and while I was chiefly interested at that time in philosophy, I read a little poetry too; and I know that my own poetry shows the influence of Indian thought and sensibility.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) first seen 1948 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948)
“The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do more, and you are not yet decrepit enough to turn them down.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Time magazine (23 October 1950)
“The majority of mankind is lazy-minded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith; and when the ordinary man calls himself a sceptic or an unbeliever, that is ordinarily a simple pose, cloaking a disinclination to think anything out to a conclusion.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Introduction to Pascal's Pensées (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1958)
“No one can become really educated without having pursued some study in which he took no interest—for it is a part of education to interest ourselves in subjects for which we have no aptitude.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Herbert Howarth, Notes on Some Figures behind T. S. Eliot (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964), p. 89
“A good half of the effort of understanding what the Indian philosophers were after and their subtleties make most of the great European philosophers look like school boys...”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: After Strange Gods (1934)
“Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes, Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There will be time to murder and create.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And indeed there will be time To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do I dare Disturb the universe?”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For I have known them all already, known them all: — Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Arms that are braceleted and white and bare [But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!] Is it perfume from a dress That makes me so digress?”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am no prophet — and here's no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: Would it have been worth while If one, settling a Pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say: "That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous — Almost, at times, the Fool.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I grow old ... I grow old ... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet's difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate predecessors; we endeavour to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed. Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously. And I do not mean the impressionable period of adolescence, but the period of full maturity.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of æsthetic, not merely historical, criticism.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature, will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. And the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some one said: "The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did." Precisely, and they are that which we know.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is not the "greatness," the intensity, of the emotions, the components, but the intensity of the artistic process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place, that counts.”
T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. Both errors tend to make him "personal." 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 (1888–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source