Top 500 T. S. Eliot Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “Our beginnings never know our ends.”

— T. S. Eliot

302. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

306. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

309. “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

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. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

315. “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

316. “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

317. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

320. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

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

— T. S. Eliot

323. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

326. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

330. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

332. “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

Featured in: Strong Quotes

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

337. “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

338. “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

339. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

341. “This love is silent.”

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

344. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

346. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

349. “When comparing works of art, it is important that the art itself, and not the artists, be considered.”

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot