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.


T.S. Eliot

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make i...
TS (THOMAS STEARNS) ELIOT
Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.
PHILIP MASSINGER
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
T. S. ELIOT
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
T.S. ELIOT
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
We turn first ter the bleedin' parallel quotations from Massinger and Shakespeare collocated by Guvn...
C.S. LEWIS
Superior poets say what they really feel. Mediocre poets say what they decide to feel. Inferior poet...
ÁLVARO DE CAMPOS
T.S. Eliot was one of the first poets introduced to me when I started studying literature and has fe...
PENELOPE MITCHELL
Nearly all men and women are poetical, to some extent, but very few can be called poets. There are g...
ORSON F. WHITNEY
I don't know if younger poets read a lot of, you know, the poets - the established poets. There was ...
ROBERT ADAMSON
Our hospital was famous and housed many great poets and singers. Did the hospital specialize in poet...
SUSANNA KAYSEN
There are two classes of poets - the poets by education and practice, these we respect; and poets by...
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Rarest of the real poets are born poets. They are the oddballs, not the professors.
JAMES BROUGHTON
Poets by Death are conquer'd but the wit Of poets triumphs over it.
ABRAHAM COWLEY
All poets are idlers, even if all idlers are not poets.
TOM HODGKINSON
For poets (bear the word) Half-poets even, are still whole democrats.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or kings — stronger than old...
GREG BEAR
Bad women poets are better characters, they seldom... get drunk... go to prison... shoot the pianist...
STEVIE SMITH
Poets arent very usefulBecause they aren't consumeful or produceful..
OGDEN NASH
Women make us poets, children make us philosophers.
MALCOLM DE CHAZAL
Poets knew that isolation in nature, far from people and things man-made, was good for the soul, and...
NICHOLAS SPARKS
Good poets are like angels of Heaven
PERSIAN PROVERB
Sure there are poets which did never dream Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream Of Helicon...
SIR JOHN DENHAM
Poets wish to profit or to please.
HORACE
But poets were not considered dangerous and they were advised to exercise self-censorship. At most, ...
EUGENIO MONTALE
Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.
LIONEL TRILLING
Sure there are poets which did never dream
Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream
Of He...
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
There is poetry even in prose, in all the great prose which is not merely utilitarian or didactic: t...
EUGENIO MONTALE
Poets have said that the reason to have children is to give yourself immortality. Immortality? Now t...
BILL COSBY
The most important thing for poets to do is to write as little as possible.
T.S. ELIOT
As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have r...
EDGAR ALLAN POE
The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musi...
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Most joyful let the Poet be; It is through him that all men see.
WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
A Poet without Love were a physical and metaphysical impossibility.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Ovid's a rake, as half his verses show him, Anacreon's morals are a still worse sample, Catull...
LORD BYRON (GEORGE GORDON NOEL BYRON)
And poets by their sufferings grow,-- As if there were no more to do, To make a poet excellent...
SAMUEL BUTLER (1)
Poets alone are sure of immortality; they are the truest diviners of nature.
EDWARD GEORGE EARLE LYTTON BULWER-LYTTON, FIRST BARON LYTTON
One fine day, Says Mister Mucklewraith to me, says he. "So! you're a poet in your house," and...
ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN
God's prophets of the Beautiful, These Poets were.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
O brave poets, keep back nothing; Nor mix falsehood with the whole! Look up Godward! speak th...
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
"There's nothing great Nor small," has said a poet of our day, Whose voice will ring beyond th...
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
Ah, poet-dreamer, within those walls What triumphs shall be yours! For all are happy and rich ...
ALONZO B. BRAGDON
Poets are sultans, if they had their will: For every author would his brother kill.
ROGER BOYLE, BARON BROGHILL AND EARL OF ORRERY
Happy the poet who with ease can steer From grave to gay, from lively to severe. [Lat., Heureu...
NICOLAS BOILEAU-DESPREAUX
A poet not in love is out at sea; He must have a lay-figure.
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY
Poets are all who love,--who feel great truths, And tell them.
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY
Singing and rejoicing, As aye since time began, The dying earth's last poet Shall be the...
ALEXANDER ANTON VON AUERSPERG ("ANASTASIUS GRUN")
The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this su...
WILLIAM JAMES
The poet and the politician have this in common: their greatness depends on the courage with which t...
JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY
Verse is not written, it is bled; Out of the poet's abstract head. Words drip the poem on the page; ...
PAUL ENGLE
A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Poets yearn, of course, to be published, read, and understood, but they do little, if anything, to s...
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
On the last day of the world
I would want to plant a tree
W.S. MERWIN
What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed tha...
SøREN KIERKEGAARD
Poets that lasting marble seek/ Must carve in Latin or in Greek.
EDMUND WALLER
There were lots of eager young faces and a variety of deliveries and musical styles, among which wer...
ANTHONY MILLER
I don't like to call myself a poet, ... Most poets are shiftless, no-account fools.
AUGUST KLEINZAHLER
Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.
JEAN COCTEAU
I'm always a bit suspicious when lyricists call themselves poets,
JIM MORRISON
Souls of poets dead and gone, / What Elysium have ye known, / Happy field or mossy cavern, / Choicer...
JOHN KEATS
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand
PLATO
Had in him those brave translunary things/ That the first poets had.
MICHAEL DRAYTON
I have never yet known a poet who did not think himself super-excellent. [Lat., Adhue neminem cog...
CICERO (MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO)
Greece, sound, thy Homer's, Rome thy Virgil's name, But England's Milton equals both in fame.
WILLIAM COWPER
They best can judge a poet's worth, Who oft themselves have known The pangs of a poetic birth ...
WILLIAM COWPER
There is a pleasure in poetic pains, Which only poets know.
WILLIAM COWPER
Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appeared, And ages ere the Mantuan Swan was heard; To carry natu...
WILLIAM COWPER
And spare the poet for his subject's sake.
WILLIAM COWPER
Who all in raptures their own works rehearse, And drawl out measur'd prose, which they call verse.
CHARLES CHURCHILL
He koude songes make and well endite.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
I can't look at things in the simple, large way that great poets do.
ISAAC ROSENBERG
There are dozens of young poets and fictioneers most of them a little insane in the tradition of Jam...
SINCLAIR LEWIS
The poet is in the end probably more afraid of the dogmatist who wants to extract the message from t...
ROBERT PENN WARREN
Poets, like whores, are only hated by each other
WILLIAM WYCHERLEY
Poets are simply those who have made a profession ans a lifestyle of being in touch with their bliss...
JOSEPH CAMPBELL
Poets are born, not paid.
ADDISON MIZNER
all the poets wanted to get disability insurance it was better than immortality.
CHARLES BUKOWSKI
There are poets who sing you to sleep
and poets who ready you for war
and I want to be bot...
ASHE VERNON
Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
There are poets and there are grownups.
JEAN COCTEAU
And mighty poets in their misery dead.
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
Poets create gods, philosophers destroy them.
MARTY RUBIN
Great poets are great copy editors.
DEJAN STOJANOVIC
Novelists invent characters; poets invent themselves.
MARTY RUBIN
Poets are never unemployed, just unpaid.
KATHY SKAGGS
The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poe...
JOHN MUIR
I worked privately, and sometimes I feel that might be better for poets than the kind of social work...
MARY OLIVER
Poets lose half the praise they should have got, Could it be known what they discreetly blot.
EDMUND WALLER
Travelers are like poets. They are mostly an angry race.
SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON
She knows more of love than the poets can say,And her eyes offer something that won't go away.
HARRY CHAPIN
Women were professors, lawyers and judges. They were journalists, writers and poets.
ANGELA KING
The people fancy they hate poetry, and they are all poets and mystics.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
We are born poets. we become orators.
UNKNOWN
Frost is the most sophisticated of poets.
PETER DAVISON
I know who the great poets are.
JACK KEROUAC
Sunshine cannot bleach the snow, Nor time unmake what poets know
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
PLATO
The people must grant a hearing to the best poets they have; else they will never have better.
HARRIET MONROE
Poets never die, I thought. They just fail in the end.
RICK YANCEY
Lovers, Lunatics and poets are made of same stuff.
BHAGAT SINGH

More T.S. Eliot

My mind may be American but my heart is British.
T.S. ELIOT
Distracted from distraction by distraction
T.S. ELIOT
For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice...
T.S. ELIOT
What is hell? Hell is oneself.
Hell is alone, the other figures in it
Merely projections...
T.S. ELIOT
Unreal friendship may turn to real
But real friendship, once ended, cannot be mended
T.S. ELIOT
...the mind is conscious, but conscious of nothing - I said to my soul, be still, and wait without h...
T.S. ELIOT
The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.
T.S. ELIOT
We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we star...
T.S. ELIOT
To approach the stranger is to invite the unexpected, release a new force, let the genie out of the ...
T.S. ELIOT
My life is light, waiting for the death wind, Like a feather on the back of my hand.
T.S. ELIOT
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
T.S. ELIOT
For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice.
T.S. ELIOT
An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolong...
T.S. ELIOT
Love is most nearly itself when here and now cease to matter.
T.S. ELIOT
The most important thing for poets to do is to write as little as possible.
T.S. ELIOT
Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is th...
T.S. ELIOT
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
T.S. ELIOT
What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.
T.S. ELIOT
There is nothing that will kill a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself.
T.S. ELIOT
In my end is my beginning.
T.S. ELIOT
What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is w...
T.S. ELIOT
Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity
T.S. ELIOT
Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.
T.S. ELIOT
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
...
T.S. ELIOT
The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.
T.S. ELIOT
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.
T.S. ELIOT
If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?
T.S. ELIOT
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
T.S. ELIOT
I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait ...
T.S. ELIOT
April is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desir...
T.S. ELIOT
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
T.S. ELIOT
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisi...
T.S. ELIOT
Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee, T.S. ELIOT
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive whe...
T.S. ELIOT
Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.
T.S. ELIOT
Pray for us now and at the hour of our birth.
T.S. ELIOT
What we know of other people's only our memory of the moments during which we knew them.
T.S. ELIOT
It is impossible to design a system so perfect that no one needs to be good.
T.S. ELIOT
There's no vocabulary For love within a family, love that's lived in But not looked at, love within ...
T.S. ELIOT
There is one order of beauty which seems made to turn heads. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or...
T.S. ELIOT
Most of us who turn to any subject we love remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a hi...
T.S. ELIOT
Here, said she, / Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor.
T.S. ELIOT
I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different.
T.S. ELIOT
One of the low on whom assurance sits / As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
T.S. ELIOT
I grow old . . . I grow old . . . / I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
T.S. ELIOT
Where is wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
T.S. ELIOT
I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
T.S. ELIOT
War is not a life: it is a situation, one which may neither be ignored nor accepted.
T.S. ELIOT
Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.
T.S. ELIOT
It's strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lov...
T.S. ELIOT
April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirrin...
T.S. ELIOT
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
T.S. ELIOT
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; / Am an attendant lord.
T.S. ELIOT
To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is eno...
T.S. ELIOT
So far as we are human, what we do must be either evil or good: so far as we do evil or good, we are...
T.S. ELIOT
For I have known them all already, know them all -- have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I...
T.S. ELIOT
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
T.S. ELIOT
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, / And in short, I was afraid.
T.S. ELIOT
It's not wise to violate the rules until you know how to observe them.
T.S. ELIOT
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of pe...
T.S. ELIOT
The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future o...
T.S. ELIOT
No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.
T.S. ELIOT
So I find words I never thought to speak

In streets I never thought I should revisit
T.S. ELIOT
Those who glitter with the glory of the hummingbird meaning death
T.S. ELIOT
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And a hundred visions and revisions
T.S. ELIOT
Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance
T.S. ELIOT
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to m...
T.S. ELIOT
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
T.S. ELIOT
Playwriting gets into your blood and you can't stop it. At least not until the producers or the publ...
T.S. ELIOT
In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in.
T.S. ELIOT
that which is only living
Can only die
T.S. ELIOT
What was to be the value of the long looked forward to,
Long hoped for calm, the autumnal seren...
T.S. ELIOT
Time present and time past / are both perhaps present in time future.
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
At the still point, there the dance is.
T.S. ELIOT
What the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication<...
T.S. ELIOT
I do not know much about gods;but I think that the river is a strong brown god-sullen, untamed and i...
T.S. ELIOT
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, every poem an epitaph.
T.S. ELIOT
Or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the musi...
T.S. ELIOT
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
T.S. ELIOT
All time is unreedemable.
T.S. ELIOT
You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it...
T.S. ELIOT
Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear...
T.S. ELIOT
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.
T.S. ELIOT
There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same h...
T.S. ELIOT
The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presenc...
T.S. ELIOT
Only through time time is conquered
T.S. ELIOT
I am glad you have a Cat, but I do not believe it is So remarkable a cat as My Cat.
T.S. ELIOT
time past and time future
what might have been and what has been
point to one end, which i...
T.S. ELIOT
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive whe...
T.S. ELIOT
So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years-
Twenty years largely wasted, the year...
T.S. ELIOT
The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues ...
T.S. ELIOT
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contain...
T.S. ELIOT
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
T.S. ELIOT
Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, in...
T.S. ELIOT
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
T.S. ELIOT
If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter
T.S. ELIOT
You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends, and how, how rare and strange it is, to find i...
T.S. ELIOT
My name is only an anagram of toilets.
T.S. ELIOT
For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice....
T.S. ELIOT
The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne, / Glowed on the marble.
T.S. ELIOT
When we read of human beings behaving in certain ways, with the approval of the author, who gives hi...
T.S. ELIOT
What do we live for; if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?
T.S. ELIOT
This love is silent.
T.S. ELIOT
Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form ...
T.S. ELIOT
You are the music while the music lasts.
T.S. ELIOT
If you haven't the strength to impose your own terms upon life, you must accept the terms it offers ...
T.S. ELIOT
The winter evening settles down / With smell of steaks in passage ways.
T.S. ELIOT
Keep true, never be ashamed of doing right; decide on what you think is right and stick to it.
T.S. ELIOT
Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.
T.S. ELIOT
Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs, rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys, adv...
T.S. ELIOT
The river is within us, the sea is all about us; The sea is the land's edge also
T.S. ELIOT
When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our se...
T.S. ELIOT
Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair.
T.S. ELIOT
Footfalls echo in the memory, Down the passage which we did not take, Towards the door we never open...
T.S. ELIOT
Let's not be narrow, nasty, and negative.
T.S. ELIOT
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of pe...
T.S. ELIOT
In my beginning is my end.
T.S. ELIOT
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
T.S. ELIOT
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
T.S. ELIOT
It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the 'dear dece...
T.S. ELIOT
Donne, I suppose, was such another / Who found no substitute for sense. / To seize and clutch and pe...
T.S. ELIOT
What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
T.S. ELIOT
I am aware of the damp souls of housemaids/Sprouting despondently at area gates.
T.S. ELIOT
Not fare well, / But fare forward, voyagers.
T.S. ELIOT
The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and ye...
T.S. ELIOT
The wounded surgeon plies the steel / That questions the distempered part.
T.S. ELIOT
We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none t...
T.S. ELIOT
The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.
T.S. ELIOT
Between the idea / And the reality / Between the motion / And the act / Falls the Shadow.
T.S. ELIOT
And I will show you something different from either your shadow at morning striding behind you or yo...
T.S. ELIOT
I do not approve the extermination of the enemy; the policy of exterminating or, as it is barbarousl...
T.S. ELIOT
Radio is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at th...
T.S. ELIOT
After the erection of the Chinese Wall of Milton, blank verse has suffered not only arrest but retro...
T.S. ELIOT
At the first turning of the second stair / I turned and saw below / The same shape twisted on the ba...
T.S. ELIOT
The dove descending breaks the air / With flame of incandescent terror.
T.S. ELIOT
People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events.
T.S. ELIOT
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mea...
T.S. ELIOT
If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it ...
T.S. ELIOT
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will...
T.S. ELIOT
He's outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)
And his footprints are not found in ...
T.S. ELIOT
Gus is the Cat at the Theatre Door.
His name, as I ought to have told you before,
Is reall...
T.S. ELIOT
With Cats, some say, one rule is true:
Don’t speak till you are spoken to.
Myself, I do ...
T.S. ELIOT
Before a Cat will condescend
To treat you as a trusted friend,
Some little token of esteem...
T.S. ELIOT
The Pekes and the Pollicles, everyone knows,
Are proud and implacable, passionate foes;
I...
T.S. ELIOT
The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may...
T.S. ELIOT
The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
T.S. ELIOT
And we must think no further of you.
T.S. ELIOT
We are being made aware that the organization of society on the principle of private profit, as well...
T.S. ELIOT
The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we li...
T.S. ELIOT
Unreal City, / Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, / A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, /...
T.S. ELIOT
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unsp...
T.S. ELIOT
For he will do
As he do do
And there's no doing anything about it!
T.S. ELIOT
To country people Cows are mild,
And flee from any stick they throw;
But I’m a timid tow...
T.S. ELIOT
We have only to conquer
Now, by suffering. This is the easier victory.
Now is the triumph...
T.S. ELIOT
Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke ...
T.S. ELIOT
One error, in fact, of eccentricity in poetry is to seek for new human emotions to express; and in t...
T.S. ELIOT
The one thing you can do is to do nothing. Wait . . . You will find that you survive humiliation and...
T.S. ELIOT
Each venture is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate with shabby equipment always deteriorati...
T.S. ELIOT
Clear the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! take stone from stone and wash them.
T.S. ELIOT
I like not only to be loved, but to be told I am loved.
T.S. ELIOT
Any poet, if he is to survive beyond his 25th year, must alter; he must seek new literary influences...
T.S. ELIOT
Ash on an old man's sleeve / Is all the ash the burnt roses leave, / Dust in the air suspended / Mar...
T.S. ELIOT
The majority of poems one outgrows and outlives, as one outgrows and outlives the majority of human ...
T.S. ELIOT
My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measu...
T.S. ELIOT
Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.
T.S. ELIOT
The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to ...
T.S. ELIOT
A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.
T.S. ELIOT
All cases are unique and very similar to others.
T.S. ELIOT
We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and ...
T.S. ELIOT
When lovely woman stoops to folly and / Paces about her room again, alone, / She smoothes her hair w...
T.S. ELIOT
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the windowpanes.
T.S. ELIOT
We do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test o...
T.S. ELIOT
Human kind cannot bear much reality.
T.S. ELIOT
If you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human being ca...
T.S. ELIOT
In the vain laughter of folly, wisdom hears half its applause.
T.S. ELIOT
To hear the latest Pole / transmit the Preludes, through his hair and fingertips.
T.S. ELIOT
Friendship should be more than biting time can sever.
T.S. ELIOT
That corpse you planted last year in your garden, / Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
T.S. ELIOT
Whatever you do, don't whimper, but take the consequences.
T.S. ELIOT
No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.
T.S. ELIOT
Only by acceptance of the past, can you alter it.
T.S. ELIOT
I said to my soul be still, and wait without hope; for hope would be hope of the wrong thing; wait w...
T.S. ELIOT
When a Cat adopts you there is nothing to be done about it except put up with it until the wind chan...
T.S. ELIOT
The highest form of treason: to do the right thing for the wrong reason. Murder in the Cathedral
T.S. ELIOT
Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important.
T.S. ELIOT
Webster was much possessed by death / And saw the skull beneath the skin.
T.S. ELIOT
I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is fa...
T.S. ELIOT
The Nobel is a ticket to one's own funeral. No one has ever done anything after he got it.
T.S. ELIOT
There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.
T.S. ELIOT
When one wanted one's interests looking after whatever the cost, it was not so well for a lawyer to ...
T.S. ELIOT
For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afterno...
T.S. ELIOT
Do I dare Disturb the universe?
T.S. ELIOT
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with s...
T.S. ELIOT
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
T.S. ELIOT
There is shadow under this red rock // (Come in under the shadow of this red rock) // And I will sho...
T.S. ELIOT
Someone said, 'The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.' Prec...
T.S. ELIOT
We understand the ordinary business of living,
We know how to work the machine
T.S. ELIOT
Oxford is very pretty, but I don't like to be dead.
T.S. ELIOT
It is certain that a book is not harmless merely because no one is consciously offended by it.
T.S. ELIOT