T.S. Eliot: Use

T.S. Eliot was 20th century English author. Explore interesting quotes on use.
T.S. Eliot: 540   quotes 46   likes

“Yet if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following the ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its successes, "tradition" should positively be discouraged. We have seen many such simple currents soon lost in the sand; and novelty is better than repetition. Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which we may call nearly indispensable to anyone who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year…”

T.S. Eliot book Tradition and the Individual Talent

Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)

Way , Sense , Success
T.S. Eliot quote: “To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.”

“To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.”

T.S. Eliot

Source: The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

Wise , Life , Life , Beauty

“Some one said: "The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did." Precisely, and they are that which we know.”

T.S. Eliot book Tradition and the Individual Talent

Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)
Source: Selected Essays

Dead

“O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of The Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.”

T.S. Eliot

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

God , Death , Silence , Autumn

“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”

T.S. Eliot

Ash-Wednesday (1930)

Sister , Suffering

“Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.”

T.S. Eliot book Poems

"Gerontion"
Poems (1920)
Context: After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What's not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what's thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

Fear , Courage , Thinking , Tear

“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.”

T.S. Eliot

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
Source: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems
Context: I grow old … I grow old...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
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.

Girl , Sea

“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”

T.S. Eliot

Ash-Wednesday (1930)
Variant: Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care

“Till Human voices wake us, and we drown.”

T.S. Eliot

“Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table.”

T.S. Eliot The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
Source: Selected Poems

“Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still. Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.”

T.S. Eliot

Ash-Wednesday (1930)

Death , Flying

“Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.”

T.S. Eliot
Feeling , Time

“Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?'/Let us go and make our visit.”

T.S. Eliot

Source: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems

“The broad-backed hippopotamus
Rests on his belly in the mud;
Although he seems so firm to us
He is merely flesh and blood.”

T.S. Eliot book Poems

"The Hippopotamus"
Poems (1920)

“Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us”

T.S. Eliot

Ash-Wednesday (1930)

“Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us — if at all — not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.”

T.S. Eliot book The Hollow Men

The Hollow Men (1925)

Death , Men , Soul

“The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. Think at last
We have not reached conclusion, when I
Stiffen in a rented house. Think at last
I have not made this show purposelessly
And it is not by any concitation
Of the backward devils.
I would meet you upon this honestly.
I that was near your heart was removed therefrom
To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition.
I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it
Since what is kept must be adulterated?”

T.S. Eliot book Poems

"Gerontion"
Poems (1920)

Beauty , Spring , Thinking , Passion

“No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous —
Almost, at times, the Fool.”

T.S. Eliot The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)

Fools , Time