Top 500 T. S. Eliot Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “I gotta use words to talk to you.”

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

304. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

306. “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

307. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

309. “People are only influenced in the direction in which they want to go, and influence consists largely in making them conscious of their wishes to proceed in that direction.”

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

313. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

316. “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

317. “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

318. “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

319. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

322. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

324. “This love is silent.”

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

328. “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

329. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

334. “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

335. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

337. “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

338. “Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”

— T. S. Eliot

339. “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

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

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

— T. S. Eliot

345. “And in short, I was afraid.”

— T. S. Eliot

346. “A play should give you something to think about. When I see a play and understand it the first time, then I know it can’t be much good.”

— T. S. Eliot

347. “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

348. “Culture is the one thing that we cannot deliberately aim at. It is the product of a variety of more or less harmonious activities, each pursued for its own sake.”

— T. S. Eliot

349. “Liberty is a different kind of pain from prison.”

— T. S. Eliot

350. “Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison.”

— T. S. Eliot