Top 500 T. S. Eliot Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “We can say of Shakespeare, that never has a man turned so little knowledge to such great account.”

— T. S. Eliot

252. “Men live by forgetting and woman live on memories.”

— T. S. Eliot

253. “Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.”

— T. S. Eliot

254. “As we grow older, the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated of dead and living.”

— T. S. Eliot

255. “The Civil War is not ended: I question whether any serious civil war ever does end.”

— T. S. Eliot

256. “Friendship should be more than biting time can sever.”

— T. S. Eliot

257. “We ask only to be reassured About the noises in the cellar And the window that should not have been open.”

— T. S. Eliot

258. “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

259. “So I find words I never thought to speak In streets I never thought I should revisit When I left my body on a distant shore.”

— T. S. Eliot

260. “Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, every poem an epitaph.”

— T. S. Eliot

261. “That was my way of putting it-not very satisfactory: A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion, Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle With words and meanings.”

— T. S. Eliot

262. “The nightingales are singing near The Convent of the Sacred Heart, And sang within the bloody wood When Agamemnon cried aloud, And let their liquid siftings fall To stain the stiff dishonored shroud.”

— T. S. Eliot

263. “The usual dog about the town is much inclined to play the clown.”

— T. S. Eliot

264. “Cling, swing, Spring, sing, Swing up into the apple tree.”

— T. S. Eliot

265. “You have gone through life in sleep, Never woken to the nightmare. I tell you, life would be unendurable If you were wide awake.”

— T. S. Eliot

266. “O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, 320 Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.”

— T. S. Eliot

267. “And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.”

— T. S. Eliot

268. “The True Church can never fail. For it is based upon a rock.”

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

270. “After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions Guides us by vanities.”

— T. S. Eliot

271. “Let me be no nearer In death’s dream kingdom Let me also wear Such deliberate disguises Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves In a field Behaving as the wind behaves No nearer – Not that final meeting In the twilight kingdom.”

— T. S. Eliot

272. “You will have to live with those memories and make them into something new. Only by acceptance of the past will you alter its meaning.”

— T. S. Eliot

273. “History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors and issues.”

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

275. “What we know of other people’s only our memory of the moments during which we knew them.”

— T. S. Eliot

276. “Between the vision and the act lies the shadow.”

— T. S. Eliot

277. “The lot of man is ceaseless labor, Or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder.”

— T. S. Eliot

278. “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 JELLYORUM and its one Idea is to be Usefull!!”

— T. S. Eliot

279. “Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other Who think the same thoughts without need of speech.”

— T. S. Eliot

280. “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

281. “We are not here to triumph by fighting, by strata gem, or by resistance, not to fight with beasts as men. We have fought the beast and have conquered. We have only to conquer now, by suffering. This is the easier victory.”

— T. S. Eliot

282. “No place of grace for those who avoid the Face. No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the Voice.”

— T. S. Eliot

283. “There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.”

— T. S. Eliot

284. “When lovely woman stoops to folly and Paces about her room again, alone, She smooths her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone.”

— T. S. Eliot

285. “Our beginnings never know our ends.”

— T. S. Eliot

286. “For he will do As he do do And there’s no doing anything about it!”

— T. S. Eliot

287. “My greatest trouble is getting the curtain up and down.”

— T. S. Eliot

288. “It is worth dying to find out what life is.”

— T. S. Eliot

289. “What a poem means is as much what it means to others as what it means to the author; and indeed, in the course of time a poet may become merely reader in respect to his own works, forgetting his original meaning.”

— T. S. Eliot

290. “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.”

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

292. “Webster was much possessed by death And saw the skull beneath the skin.”

— T. S. Eliot

293. “Envy is everywhere. Who is without envy? And most people Are unaware or unashamed of being envious.”

— T. S. Eliot

294. “Those who glitter with the glory of the hummingbird meaning death.”

— T. S. Eliot

295. “When you notice a cat in profound meditation, The reason, I tell you, is always the same: His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name: His ineffable effable Effanineffable Deep and inscrutable singular Name.”

— T. S. Eliot

296. “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.”

— T. S. Eliot

297. “Every street lamp that I pass Beats like a fatalistic drum, And through the spaces of the dark Midnight shakes the memory As a madman shakes a dead geranium.”

— T. S. Eliot

298. “Before a cat will condescend to treat you as a trusted friend, some little token of esteem is needed, like a dish of cream.”

— T. S. Eliot

299. “Not the intense moment Isolated, with no before and after, But a lifetime burning in every moment.”

— T. S. Eliot

300. “Because I know that time is always time And place is always and only place...”

— T. S. Eliot