T. S. Eliot quotes

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. (T. S. Eliot)
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
T. S. Eliot
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
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 emotion know what it means to want to escape from these.
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
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
April is the cruellest month.
T. S. Eliot
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
T. S. Eliot
The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.
T. S. Eliot
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
T. S. Eliot
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom. (T. S. Eliot)
If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?
T. S. Eliot
The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter, It isn't just one of your holiday games; You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
T. S. Eliot
Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow.
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 where we start from.
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
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
T. S. Eliot
You are the music while the music lasts.
T. S. Eliot
The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious.
T. S. Eliot
People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events.
T. S. Eliot
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. (T. S. Eliot)
We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion.
T. S. Eliot
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.
T. S. Eliot
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
It's not wise to violate rules until you know how to observe them.
T. S. Eliot