Quotes from book
The Waste Land

T.S. Eliot

The Waste Land is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central work of modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the United Kingdom in the October issue of Eliot's The Criterion and in the United States in the November issue of The Dial. It was published in book form in December 1922. Among its famous phrases are "April is the cruellest month", "I will show you fear in a handful of dust", and the mantra in the Sanskrit language "Shantih shantih shantih".Eliot's poem loosely follows the legend of the Holy Grail and the Fisher King combined with vignettes of contemporary British society. Eliot employs many literary and cultural allusions from the Western canon, Buddhism and the Hindu Upanishads. The poem shifts between voices of satire and prophecy featuring abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location, and time and conjuring a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures.

T.S. Eliot photo

“Who is the third who walks always beside you
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land (1922), Line 359 et seq.

Eliot's note: Stimulated by Shackleton's Antarctic expedition where the explorers at the extremity of their strength believed there was another who walked with them across South Georgia!

T.S. Eliot photo

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

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

The final lines of the poem.
The Waste Land (1922)
Source: The Waste Land and Other Poems

T.S. Eliot photo

“For you know only a heap of broken images”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land

T.S. Eliot photo

“Fading, fading: strength beyond hope and despair climbing the third stair. Lord, I am not worthy Lord, I am not worthy but speak the word only.”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land and Other Poems

T.S. Eliot photo

“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.”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land

T.S. Eliot photo

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

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land and Other Poems

T.S. Eliot photo

“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”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land

T.S. Eliot photo

“Then spoke the thunder
DA Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed.”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Variant: The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Source: The Waste Land (1922)

T.S. Eliot photo

“I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison.”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land (1922)

T.S. Eliot photo

“Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land

T.S. Eliot photo

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land (1922), Line 25 et seq.
Context: There is shadow under this red rock
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
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.

T.S. Eliot photo

“April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land (1922), Line 1 et seq.

T.S. Eliot photo

“He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience.”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land

T.S. Eliot photo

“In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land (1922), Line 385 et seq.

T.S. Eliot photo

“O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land (1922), Line 320 et seq.

T.S. Eliot photo

“Unreal city,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land (1922), Line 60 et seq.

This is a reference to Dante's Inferno, Canto III, lines 55-57

T.S. Eliot photo

“What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land (1922), Line 367 et seq.

T.S. Eliot photo

“O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—
It's so elegant
So intelligent”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land (1922), Line 128 et seq.

T.S. Eliot photo

“I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land (1922), Line 39 et seq.

Similar authors

T.S. Eliot photo
T.S. Eliot 270
20th century English author 1888–1965
George Santayana photo
George Santayana 109
20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with P…
Mikhail Bulgakov photo
Mikhail Bulgakov 63
Russian author primarily known for his novel "Master and Ma…
Rudyard Kipling photo
Rudyard Kipling 200
English short-story writer, poet, and novelist
P.G. Wodehouse photo
P.G. Wodehouse 302
English author
H.P. Lovecraft photo
H.P. Lovecraft 203
American author
Cesare Pavese photo
Cesare Pavese 137
Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator
Yukio Mishima photo
Yukio Mishima 60
Japanese author
Terry Pratchett photo
Terry Pratchett 796
English author
Mario Benedetti photo
Mario Benedetti 4
Uruguayan journalist, novelist, and poet