A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest. T. S. Eliot More Quotes by T. S. Eliot More Quotes From T. S. Eliot I was too slow a mover to be a boxer. It was much easier to be a poet. T. S. Eliot boxers easier poet For every life and every act consequence of good and evil can be shown and as in time results of many deeds are blended so good and evil in the end become confounded. T. S. Eliot deeds ends evil Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? T. S. Eliot cake ice strength April is the cruellest month. T. S. Eliot april classic months The Nobel is a ticket to one's own funeral. No one has ever done anything after he got it. T. S. Eliot tickets funeral done I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. T. S. Eliot coffee success life Justice itself tends to be corrupted by political passion. T. S. Eliot passion war peace I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different. T. S. Eliot birth different death 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. T. S. Eliot poet appreciation art To believe in the supernatural is not simply to believe that after living a successful, material, and fairly virtuous life here one will continue to exist in the best-possible substitute for this world, or that after living a starved and stunted life here one will be compensated with all the good things one has gone without: it is to believe that the supernatural is the greatest reality here and now. T. S. Eliot successful believe reality War among men defiles this world. T. S. Eliot men war world When a Cat adopts you, and I am not superstitious at all I don't mean only Black cats there is nothing to be done about it except to put up with it and wait until the wind changes. T. S. Eliot cat pet wind 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. T. S. Eliot humility sea house These fragments I have shored against my ruins T. S. Eliot ruins nostalgia age If you find examples of humanism which are anti-religious, or at least in opposition to the religious faith of the place and time, then such humanism is purely destructive, for it has never found anything to replace what it has destroyed. T. S. Eliot example religious found Human kind cannot bear much reality. T. S. Eliot humanity bears reality A good deal of confusion could be avoided, if we refrained from setting before the group, what can be the aim only of the individual; and before society as a whole, what can be the aim only of the group. T. S. Eliot groups statistics confusion 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. T. S. Eliot butterfly space doe If we are moved by a poem, it has meant something, perhaps something important, to us; if we are not moved, then it is, as poetry, meaningless. T. S. Eliot moved important ifs If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent If the unheard, unspoken Word is unspoken, unheard; Still is the spoken word, the Word unheard, The Word without a word, the Word within The world and for the world; And the light shone in the darkness and Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled About the center of the silent Word. Oh my people, what have I done unto thee. Where shall the word be found, where shall the word Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence T. S. Eliot silence light people
