Quotes from T.S. Eliot

Teach us to care and not to care

In my end is my beginning.

I love reading another reader's list of favorites. Even when I find I do not share their tastes or predilections, I am provoked to compare, contrast, and contradict. It is a most healthy exercise, and one altogether fruitful.

We do not pass through the same door twice Or return to the door through which we did not pass

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

The last act is the greatest treason. To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

music heard so deeply That it is not heard at all, but you are the music While the music lasts.

For you know only a heap of broken images

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.

My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me. 'Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak. 'What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? 'I never know what you are thinking. Think.

I should have been a pair of ragged claws/ Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

This is one moment, / But know that another / Shall pierce you with a sudden painful joy.

I can connect Nothing with nothing

No one can become really educated without having pursued some study in which he took no interest- for it is a part of education to learn to interest ourselves in subjects for which we have no aptitude.

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.

He who was living is now dead We who were living are now dying With a little patience.

Men dislike being awakened from their death in life.

People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events.

Do not let me hear Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly, Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession, Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God. The only wisdom we can hope to acquire Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.

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

You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends, And how, how rare and strange it is, to find In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends, (For indeed I do not love it ... you knew? you are not blind! How keen you are!) To find a friend who has these qualities, Who has, and gives Those qualities upon which friendship lives. How much it means that I say this to you- Without these friendships-life, what cauchemar!

If time and space, as sages say, Are things which cannot be, The sun which does not feel decay No greater is than we. So why, Love, should we ever pray To live a century? The butterfly that lives a day Has lived eternity.

No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead.