Top 500 T. S. Eliot Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

303. “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

304. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

307. “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

308. “I gotta use words to talk to you.”

— T. S. Eliot

309. “I am no prophet-and here’s no great matter.”

— T. S. Eliot

310. “All time is eternal, moving inexorably toward an end which we believe is a result of our actions, but over which our control is mere illusion.”

— T. S. Eliot

311. “Never commit yourself to a cheese without having first examined it.”

— T. S. Eliot

312. “And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor – And this, and so much more? -.”

— T. S. Eliot

313. “But at my back from time to time I hear The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring. O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter And on her daughter They wash their feet in soda water.”

— T. S. Eliot

314. “Ambition fortifies the will of man to become ruler over other men: it operates with deception, cajolery, and violence, it is the action of impurity upon impurity.”

— T. S. Eliot

315. “I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids Sprouting despondently at area gates.”

— T. S. Eliot

316. “No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone.”

— T. S. Eliot

317. “Let’s not be narrow, nasty, and negative.”

— T. S. Eliot

318. “Stand on the highest pavement of the stair- Lean on a garden urn- Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.”

— T. S. Eliot

319. “The overwhelming pressure of mediocrity, sluggish and indomitable as a glacier, will mitigate the most violent, and depress the most exalted revolution.”

— T. S. Eliot

320. “I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river Is a strong brown god-sullen, untamed and intractable.”

— T. S. Eliot

321. “All dash to and fro in motor cars. Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere.”

— T. S. Eliot

322. “The hippopotamus’s day Is passed in sleep; at night he hunts; God works in a mysterious way- The Church can sleep and feed at once.”

— T. S. Eliot

323. “War is not a life: it is a situation, one which may neither be ignored nor accepted.”

— T. S. Eliot

324. “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

325. “There is, it seems to us, At best, only a limited value In the knowledge derived from experience.”

— T. S. Eliot

326. “Turning Wearily, as one would turn to nod goodbye to Rochefoucauld, If the street were time and he as the end of the street.”

— T. S. Eliot

327. “It is not necessarily those lands which are the most fertile or most favored in climate that seem to me the happiest, but those in which a long struggle of adaptation between man and his environment has brought out the best qualities of both.”

— T. S. Eliot

328. “This love is silent.”

— T. S. Eliot

329. “Upon the glazen shelves kept watch Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith The army of unalterable law.”

— T. S. Eliot

330. “All art emulates the condition of ritual. That is what it comes from and to that it must always return for nourishment.”

— T. S. Eliot

331. “Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of heaven in twenty centuries have bought us farther from God and nearer to the dust.”

— T. S. Eliot

332. “I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.”

— T. S. Eliot

333. “Good poets borrow, great poets steal.”

— T. S. Eliot

334. “Hungry Hatred, will not strive against intelligence self-interest.”

— T. S. Eliot

335. “With out some kind of god, man is not very intresting.”

— T. S. Eliot

336. “The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.”

— T. S. Eliot

337. “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

338. “You have learned enough to see that cats are much like you and me.”

— T. S. Eliot

339. “Artistic inevitability lies in the complete adequacy of the external to the emotion.”

— T. S. Eliot

340. “Words strain, crack, and sometime break, under the burden.”

— T. S. Eliot

341. “The soul of Man must quicken to creation.”

— T. S. Eliot

342. “And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices in the lost lilac and the lost sea voices and the weak spirit quickens to rebel for the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell quickens to recover.”

— T. S. Eliot

343. “But it seems that something has happened that has never happened before: though we know not just when, or why, or how, or where.”

— T. S. Eliot

344. “Culture may even be described simply as that which makes life worth living.”

— T. S. Eliot

345. “Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought.”

— T. S. Eliot

346. “It has frequently been said that we never desire what we think absolutely inapprehensible: it is however true that some of our sharpest agonies are those in which the object of desire is regarded as both possible and imaginary.”

— T. S. Eliot

347. “This is the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating every word.”

— T. S. Eliot

348. “Now that the lilacs are in bloom She has a bowl of lilacs in her room.”

— T. S. Eliot

349. “And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.”

— T. S. Eliot

350. “And in short, I was afraid.”

— T. S. Eliot