Quotes by 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?”

“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter”

“Where is the Life we have lost in living?”

“We must believe that emotion recollected in tranquillity is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration of a very great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not recollected and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is tranquil only in that it is a passive attending upon the event.”

“Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair.”

“That corpse you planted last year in your garden, / Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?”

“War is not a life: it is a situation, one which may neither be ignored nor accepted.”

“When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherised upon a table.”

“And we must think no further of you.”

“An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.”

“What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.”

“April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.”

“If you arent in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?”

“Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.”

“Motivation is like food for the brain. You cannot get enough in one sitting. It needs continual and regular top ups.”

“The Nobel is a ticket to ones own funeral. No one has ever done anything after he got it.”

“No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.”

“Between the idea / And the reality / Between the motion / And the act / Falls the Shadow.”

“For last years words belong to last years language and next years words await another voice.”

“I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different.”