Quotes from T. S. Eliot

Human kind cannot bear very much reality.

April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with Spring rain.

April is the crudest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.

I suppose some editors are failed writers - but so are most writers.

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

That meddling in other people's affairs...formerly conducted by the most discreet intrigue is now openly advocated under the name of intervention.

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?

The only wisdom we can hope to acquire Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless. The houses are all gone under the sea. The dancers are all gone under the hill.

People exercise an unconscious selection in being influenced.

I suppose some editors are failed writers - but so are most writers.

In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

It is only in the world of objects that we have time and space and selves.

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

They know and do not know, what it is to act or suffer. They know and do not know, that acting is suffering.

Time the destroyer is time the preserver.

Saint and Martyr rule from the tomb.

At the violet hour, when the eyes and backTurn upward from the desk, when the human engine waitsLike a taxi throbbing waiting,I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives.

The great poet, in writing himself, writes his time.

The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do more, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.

The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flyingUnbroken wings.And the lost heart stiffens and rejoicesIn the lost lilac and the lost sea voicesAnd the weak spirit quickens to rebelFor the bent goldenrod and the lost sea smell.

Garlic and sapphires in the mudClot the bedded axle-tree.The trilling wire in the bloodSings below inveterate scarsAnd reconciles forgotten wars.

Love is most nearly itselfWhen here and now cease to matter.Old men ought to be explorersHere and there does not matterWe must be still and still movingInto another intensityFor a further union, a deeper communionThrough the dark cold and the empty desolation,The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast watersOf the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

In the uncertain hour before the morningNear the ending of interminable nightAt the recurrent end of the unendingAfter the dark dove with the flickering tongueHad passed below the horizon of his homing.

Sometimes these cogitations still amazeThe troubled midnight and the noon's repose.