T.S. Eliot Quotes

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“I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.”

“Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.”

“Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity”

“We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”

“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these.”

“These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih”

“Books. Cats. Life is good.”

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

“Distracted from distraction by distraction”

“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.”

“It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous.
Resign yourself to be the fool you are…
… We must always take risks. That is our destiny…”

“The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.”

“I learn a great deal by merely observing you, and letting you talk as long as you please, and taking note of what you do not say.”

“Light
Light
The visible reminder of Invisible Light.”

“Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still.”

“I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.”

“Do I dare Disturb the universe?”

“Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair.”

“We don't actually fear death, we fear that no one will notice our absence, that we will disappear without a trace.”

“There is one who remembers the way to your door:
Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.
You shall not deny the Stranger.”

“I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, and I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, and in short, I was afraid.”

“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.”

“Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care”

“We do not pass through the same door twice
Or return to the door through which we did not pass”

“I love reading another reader’s list of favorites. Even when I find I do not share their tastes or predilections, I am provoked to compare, contrast, and contradict. It is a most healthy exercise, and one altogether fruitful.”

“An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.”

“We had the experience but missed the meaning. And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form.”

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

“For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”

“Humor is also a way of saying something serious.”

“I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”

“music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but
you are the music
While the music lasts.”

“And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you
I will show you fear in a handful of dust”

“I can connect
Nothing with nothing”

“I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”

“We read many books, because we cannot know enough people.”

“For you know only a heap of broken images”

“No one can become really educated without having pursued some study in which he took no interest- for it is a part of education to learn to interest ourselves in subjects for which we have no aptitude.”

“My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
'Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.
'What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
'I never know what you are thinking. Think.”

“This love is silent.”

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.”

“In my end is my beginning.”

“Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.”

“It's not wise to violate the rules until you know how to observe them.”

“Men dislike being awakened from their death in life.”

“Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance”

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

“Footfalls echo in the memory
down the passage we did not take
towards the door we never opened
into the rose garden. My words echo
thus, in your mind”

“I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.”