Top 500 T. S. Eliot Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “The Nobel is a ticket to one’s own funeral. No one has ever done anything after he got it.”

— T. S. Eliot

252. “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

253. “We are being made aware that the organization of society on the principle of private profit, as well as public destruction, is leading both to the deformation of humanity by unregulated industrialism, and to the exhaustion of natural resources, and that a good deal of our material progress is a progress for which succeeding generations may have to pay dearly.”

— T. S. Eliot

254. “Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.”

— T. S. Eliot

255. “We acknowledge our trespass, our weakness, our fault; we acknowledge That the sin of the world is upon our heads; that the blood of the martyrs and the agony of the saints Is upon our heads. Lord, have mercy upon us. Christ, have mercy upon us. Lord, have mercy upon us. Blessed Thomas, pray for us.”

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

257. “To become what you are not, behave as you do not.”

— T. S. Eliot

258. “One starts an action simply because one must do something.”

— T. S. Eliot

259. “Probably, indeed, the larger part of the labor of an author composing his work is critical labor; the labor of sifting, combining, constructing, expunging, correcting, testing. This frightful toil is as much critical as creative.”

— T. S. Eliot

260. “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

261. “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.”

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

267. “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

268. “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

269. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

272. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

278. “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

279. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

282. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

286. “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

287. “A christian martyrdom is never an accident, for Saints are not made by accident.”

— T. S. Eliot

288. “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

289. “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

290. “Our beginnings never know our ends.”

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

292. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

296. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

298. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot