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T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot Quotes

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Famous T. S. Eliot Quotes

“The historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of literature from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order.”

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Book:The Sacred Wood and Major Early Essays
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“Destiny ... a word which means more than we can find any definitions for. It is a word which can have no meaning in a mechanical universe: if that which is wound up must run down, what destiny is there in that? Destiny is not necessitarianism, and it is not caprice: it is something essentially meaningful. Each man has his destiny, though some men are undoubtedly "men of destiny" in a sense in which most men are not.”

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Author:T. S. Eliot
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“One thing you cannot know: The sudden extinction of every alternative, The unexpected crash of the iron cataract. You do not know what hope is, until you have lost it. You only know what it is not to hope: You do not know what it is to have hope taken from you Or to fling it away, to join the legion of the hopeless Unrecognized by other men, though sometimes by each other.”

KnowsMenSometimesHopeLostTakenOne ThingAlternativesUnexpectedIronHopelessCrashExtinctionHaving HopeFlingLegion
Book:The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot
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“the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. [He] 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”

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Book:The Sacred Wood and Major Early Essays
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“No university ought to be merely a national institution....The universities should have their common ideals, they should have their common obligations toward each other. They should be independent of the governments of the countries in which they are situated. They should not be institutions for the training of an efficient bureaucracy, or for equipping scientists to get the better of foreign scientists; they should stand for the preservation of learning, for the pursuit of truth, and in so far as men are capable of it, the attainment of wisdom.”

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Author:T. S. Eliot
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“To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.”

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Book:The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism: Studies in the Relation of Criticism to Poetry in England
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“…Forgive us, O Lord, we acknowledge ourselves as type of the common man, Of the men and women who shut the door and sit by the fire; Who fear the blessing of God, the loneliness of the night of God, the surrender required, the deprivation inflicted; Who fear the injustice of men less than the justice of God; Who fear the hand at the window, the fire in the thatch, the fist in the tavern, the push into the canal, Less than we fear the love of God.”

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Book:The Complete Plays of T. S. Eliot
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“Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter. Old men ought to be explorers Here or there does not matter We must be still and still moving Into another intensity For a further union, a deeper communion Through the dark cold and the empty desolation, The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters Of the petrel and the porpoise.”

MenLifeDoeStillsMatterMovingWaterDarkLove IsCryWindColdOughtEmptyUnionsWaveDeeperCeaseOld ManIntensityCommunionHere And NowExplorersDesolationPorpoises
Book:Cuatro cuartetos: Precedido por La roca y Asesinato en la Catedral
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“I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river is a strong brown god-sullen, untamed and intractable, Patient to some degree, at first recognized as a frontier; Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce; Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges. The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten By the dwellers in cities-ever, however, implacable. Keeping his seasons, and rages, destroyer, reminder Of what men choose to forget. Unhonored, unpropitiated By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.”

ThinkingKnowsMenFirstsProblemStrongWaitingWaterForgetCitiesDegreesRainRiversMachinesSeasonsPatientForgottenRageBridgesBrownCommerceRemindersFrontiersBuilderConfrontingDestroyersSullenWorshippersDwellersUntamedUntrustworthy
Author:T. S. Eliot
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“But it seems that something has happened that has never happened before; though we know not just when, or why, or how, or where. Men have left God not for gods, they say, but for no gods; and this has never happened before. That men both deny gods and worship gods, professing first Reason, and the money, and power, and what they call life, or race, or dialect.The church disowned, the tower overthrown, the bells upturned, what have we to do but stand with empty hands and palms upturned in an age which advances progressively backwards?”

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Book:The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot
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“In my beginning is my end. In succession Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended, Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass. Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires, Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth Which is already flesh, fur and faeces, Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.”

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Author:T. S. Eliot
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