How wild it was, to let it be.T. S. Eliot
We understand the ordinary business of living, We know how to work the machineT. S. Eliot
You are not here to verify, instruct yourself, or inform curiosityor carry report. You are here to kneelwhere prayer has been valid. And prayer is more than an order of words, the conscious occupation of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.T. S. Eliot
A toothache, or a violent passion, is not necessarily diminished by our knowledge of its causes, its character, its importance or insignificance.T. S. Eliot
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
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
The difference between being an elder statesman And posing successfully as an elder statesman Is practically negligible.T. S. Eliot
The young feel tired at the end of an action The old at the beginning.T. S. Eliot
In the last few years everything I'd done up to sixty or so has seemed very childish.T. S. Eliot
You have now learned to see That cats are much like you and me And other people whom we find Possessed of various types of mind.T. S. Eliot
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
In my beginning is my end.T. S. Eliot
The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always asked to do things and you are not yet decrepit enough to turn them down.T. S. Eliot
What is actual is actual only for one time. And only for one place.T. S. Eliot
What is actual is actual only for one time and only for one place.T. S. Eliot
This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.T. S. Eliot
Genuine blasphemy genuine in spirit and not purely verbal is the product of partial belief and is as impossible to the complete atheist as to the perfect Christian.T. S. Eliot
Should I after tea and cakes and ices have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?T. S. Eliot
What we call the beginning is often an end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.T. S. Eliot
No one can become really educated without having pursued some study in which he took no interest. For it is part of education to interest ourselves in subjects for which we have no aptitude.T. S. Eliot
It is in fact a part of the function of education to help us to escape not from our own time - for we are bound by that - but from the intellectual and emotional limitations of our time.T. S. Eliot
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.T. S. Eliot
Poetry is a mug's game.T. S. Eliot
One starts an action simply because one must do something.T. S. Eliot
Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important.T. S. Eliot
The historical sense involves a perception not only of the pastness of the past but of its presence.T. S. Eliot
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.T. S. Eliot
Birth copulation and death. That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks.T. S. Eliot
It is not necessarily those lands which are the most fertile or most favored climate that seem to me the happiest but those in which a long stroke of adaptation between man and his environment has brought out the best qualities of both.T. S. Eliot
All cases are unique and very similar to others.T. S. Eliot
Philosophy - the purple bullfinch in the lilac tree.T. S. Eliot
When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work it is constantly amalgamating disparate experiences.T. S. Eliot
When a great poet has lived certain things have been done once for all and cannot be achieved again.T. S. Eliot
No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: he may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.T. S. Eliot
The poet's mind is ... a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings phrases images which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.T. S. Eliot
People exercise an unconscious selection in being influenced.T. S. Eliot
Human kind cannot bear very much reality.T. S. Eliot
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
Success is relative: It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.T. S. Eliot
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
April is the crudest month breeding Lilacs out of the dead land mixing Memory and desire stirring Dull roots with spring rain.T. S. Eliot
Half of 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.T. S. Eliot
I suppose some editors are failed writers - but so are most writers.T. S. Eliot
An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better a little better.T. S. Eliot
The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all.T. S. Eliot
Business today consists in persuading crowds.T. S. Eliot
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope, For hope would be hope for the wrong thing.T. S. Eliot
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.T. S. Eliot
This love is silent.T. S. Eliot
The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.T. S. Eliot
It is only in the world of objects that we have time and space and selves.T. S. Eliot
Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs, rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys, advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm, retreating to the corner of arm and knee, eager to be reassured, taking pleasure in the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree.T. S. Eliot
Knowledge is invariably a matter of degree: you cannot put your finger upon even the simplest datum and say this we know.T. S. Eliot
I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different.T. S. Eliot
You are the music while the music lasts.T. S. Eliot
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
There is no method but to be very intelligent.T. S. Eliot
I am an Anglo-Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature and a royalist in politics.T. S. Eliot
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.T. S. Eliot
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.T. S. Eliot
Where is all the knowledge we lost with information?T. S. Eliot
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?T. S. Eliot
So the lover must struggle for words.T. S. Eliot
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 emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.T. S. Eliot
As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.T. S. Eliot
Immature poets imitate mature poets steal.T. S. Eliot
Poetry should help, not only to refine the language of the time, but to prevent it from changing too rapidly.T. S. Eliot
Home is where one starts from.T. S. Eliot