Quotes by T.S. Eliot

They constantly try to escapeFrom the darkness outside and withinBy dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.But the man that is shall shadowThe man that pretends to be.

Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.There is one who remembers the way to your door:Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.You shall not deny the Stranger.They constantly try to escapeFrom the darkness outside and withinBy dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.But the man that is shall shadowThe man that pretends to be.

Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.

The world turns and the world changes,But one thing does not change.In all of my years, one thing does not change,However you disguise it, this thing does not change:The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.

We ask only to be reassuredAbout the noises in the cellarAnd the window that should not have been open

Time present and time pastAre both perhaps present in time futureAnd time future contained in time past.If all time is eternally presentAll time is unredeemable.What might have been is an abstractionRemaining a perpetual possibilityOnly in a world of speculation.What might have been and what has beenPoint to one end, which is always present.

When a poets mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience; the ordinary mans experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. The latter falls in love, or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes.

What was to be the value of the long looked forward to,Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenityAnd the wisdom of age? Had they deceived usOr deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?The serenity only a deliberate hebetude,The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secretsUseless in the darkness into which they peeredOr from which they turned their eyes. There is, it seems to us,At best, only a limited valueIn the knowledge derived from experience.The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,For the pattern is new in every momentAnd every moment is a new and shockingValuation of all we have been. We are only undeceivedOf that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spentIf the unheard, unspokenWord is unspoken, unheard;Still is the spoken word, the Word unheard,The Word without a word, the Word withinThe world and for the world;And the light shone in the darkness andAgainst the Word the unstilled world still whirledAbout the center of the silent Word.Oh my people, what have I done unto thee.Where shall the word be found, where shall the wordResound? Not here, there is not enough silence

To make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.

One error, in fact, of eccentricity in poetry is to seek for new human emotions to express; and in this search for novelty in the wrong place it discovers the perverse. 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.

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool.

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance.

There are three conditions which often look alikeYet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachmentFrom self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference, ... .

I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots;Her coat is one of the tabby kind,with tiger stripes and lepard spots.

Now that lilacs are in bloomShe has a bowl of lilacs in her roomAnd twists one in her fingers while she talks.Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not knowWhat life is, you who hold it in your hands; (slowly twisting the lilac stalks)You let it flow from you, you let it flow,And youth is cruel, and has no remorseAnd smiles at situations which it cannot see.I smile, of course,And go on drinking tea.

What the dead had no speech for, when living,They can tell you, being dead: the communicationOf the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.

An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better.

Between the desireAnd the spasm,Between the potencyAnd the existence,Between the essenceAnd the descent,Falls the Shadow.

Old Deuteronomys lived a long time;Hes a Cat who has lived many lives in succession.He was famous in proverb and famous in rhymeA long while before Queen Victorias accession.Old Deuteronomys buried nine wivesAnd more – I am tempted to say, ninety-nine;And his numerous progeny prospers and thrivesAnd the village is proud of him in his decline.At the sight of that placid and bland physiognomy,When he sits in the sun on the vicarage wall,The Oldest Inhabitant croaks: Well, of all … Things … Can it be … really! … No! … Yes! … Ho! hi!Oh, my eye!My mind may be wandering, but I confess I believe it is Old Deuteronomy!Old Deuteronomy sits in the street,He sits in the High Street on market day;The bullocks may bellow, the sheep they may bleat,But the dogs and the herdsman will turn them away.The cars and the lorries run over the kerb,And the villagers put up a notice: ROAD CLOSED —So that nothing untoward may chance to disturbDeuteronomys rest when he feels so disposedOr when hes engaged in domestic economy:And the Oldest Inhabitant croaks: Well of all …Things … Can it be … really! … No! … Yes! …Ho! hi!Oh, my eye!My sights unreliable, but I can guessThat the cause of the trouble is Old Deuteronomy!