T. S. Eliot Quotes

Home is where one starts from.

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope, For hope would be hope for the wrong thing.

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.

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.

A toothache, or a violent passion, is not necessarily diminished by our knowledge of its causes, its character, its importance or insignificance.

Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself.

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.

It's strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words.

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

You are the music while the music lasts.

All significant truths are private truths. As they become public they cease to become truths; they become facts, or at best, part of the public character; or at worst, catchwords.

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.

O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart: for the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.

If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?

Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity.

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

It is obvious that we can no more explain a passion to a person who has never experienced it than we can explain light to the blind.

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.

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?

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.

What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

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.