Quotes from T.S. Eliot

The man who returns will have to meet The boy who left.

Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.

Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o'clock in the morning.

For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice.

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

To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.

Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.

We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.

April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.

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

For I have known them all already, known them all— Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

Books. Cats. Life is good.

What is hell? Hell is oneself. Hell is alone, the other figures in it Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from And nothing to escape to. One is always alone.

For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning." ( Little Gidding )

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

Unreal friendship may turn to real But real friendship, once ended, cannot be mended

You are the music while the music lasts.

If you haven't the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it offers you.

We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion; - The Hollow Men

Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden.

Whatever you think, be sure it is what you think; whatever you want, be sure that is what you want; whatever you feel, be sure that is what you feel.