Thomas Stearns Eliot quotes

“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. ”

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

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

— Thomas Stearns 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. ”

— Thomas Stearns 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 emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things. ”

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

“Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity. ”

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

“Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood. ”

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

“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. ”

— Thomas Stearns 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? ”

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

“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. ”

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

“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. ”

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

“You are the music while the music lasts. ”

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

“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. ”

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

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

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

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

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

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

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

“ Humankind cannot bear very much reality. ”

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

“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. ”

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

“I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. ”

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust. ”

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

“And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness. ”

— Thomas Stearns 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. ”

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

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

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

“Home is where one starts from. ”

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal. ”

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

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

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

“This love is silent. ”

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

“The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason. ”

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

“This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper. ”

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

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

— Thomas Stearns Eliot

“It's not wise to violate rules until you know how to observe them. ”

— Thomas Stearns Eliot