To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life. — T. S. Eliot

Tradition: how the vitality of the past enriches the life of the present. — T. S. Eliot

It is worth while dying, to find out what life is. — T. S. Eliot

It seems just possible that a poem might happen to a very young man: but a poem is not poetry–That is a life. — T. S. Eliot

Life is long between the desire and the spasm. — T. S. Eliot

There is one who remembers the way to your door: Life you may evade, but Death you shall not. — T. S. Eliot

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. — T. S. Eliot

Where is the Life we lost in living? — T. S. Eliot

Our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves, and of our visible, sensible world. — T. S. Eliot

I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me, I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me. — T. S. Eliot

Finding a way to live the simple life is one of life’s supreme complications. — T. S. Eliot

Books. Cats. Life is good. — T.S. Eliot

Men dislike being awakened from their death in life. — T. S. Eliot

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. — T. S. Eliot

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a taxi throbbing waiting I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives. — T. S. Eliot

If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it offers you. — T. S. Eliot

Gradually we come to admit that Shakespeare understands a greater extent and variety of human life than Dante; but that Dante understands deeper degrees of degradation and higher degrees of exaltation. — T. S. Eliot

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

War is not a life: it is a situation, one which may neither be ignored nor accepted. — T. S. Eliot

Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall My buried life, and Paris in the spring, I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world To be wonderful and youthful afterall — T. S. 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. — T. S. Eliot

The greatest proof of Christianity for others is not how far a man can logically analyze his reasons for believing, but how far in practice he will stake his life on his belief. — T. S. Eliot

In spite of all the dishonour, the broken standards, the broken lives, The broken faith in one place or another, There was something left that was more than the tales Of old men on winter evenings. — T. S. Eliot

Everyone gets the experience. Some get the lesson. — T. S. Eliot

And the end and the beginning were always there Before the beginning and after the end. — T. S. Eliot

Every moment is a fresh beginning. — T. S. Eliot

Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, every poem an epitaph. — T. S. 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. — T. S. Eliot

Each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling. — T. S. Eliot

The young feel tired at the end of an action, the old at the beginning. — T. S. Eliot

Where there is no temple there shall be no homes. — T. S. Eliot

The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. — T. S. Eliot

Because I know that time is always time And place is always and only place. — T. S. Eliot

Time present and time past / are both perhaps present in time future. — T. S. Eliot

If all time is eternally present, all time is unredeemable — T. S. Eliot

Time past and time future allow but a little consciousness. To be conscious is not to be in time. — T. S. Eliot

Friendship should be more than biting time can sever. — T. S. Eliot

Only through time time is conquered — T. S. Eliot

And indeed there will be time to wonder, ‘Do I dare?’, and ‘Do I dare? — T. S. Eliot

Hurry up, please, its time. — T. S. Eliot

In life there is not time to grieve long. — T. S. Eliot

At the beach–time you enjoyed wasting, is not wasted. — T. S. Eliot

A people without history Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern Of timeless moments. — T. S. Eliot

There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet. — T. S. Eliot

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

A play should give you something to think about. When I see a play and understand it the first time, then I know it can’t be much good. — T. S. Eliot

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

In the life of one man, never The same time returns. — T. S. Eliot

A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest. — T. S. Eliot

Poetry should help, not only to refine the language of the time, but to prevent it from changing too rapidly. — T. S. Eliot

Time past and Time future what might have been and what has been point to one end, which is always present. — T. S. Eliot

Turning Wearily, as one would turn to nod goodbye to Rochefoucauld, If the street were time and he as the end of the street. — T. S. Eliot

Here between the hither and the farther shore While time is withdrawn, consider the future And the past with an equal mind. — T. S. Eliot

No place of grace for those who avoid the Face. No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the Voice. — T. S. Eliot

The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. — T. S. Eliot

The immature poet imitates, the mature poet plagiarizes. — T. S. Eliot

Good poets borrow, great poets steal — T. S. Eliot

I was too slow a mover to be a boxer. It was much easier to be a poet. — T. S. Eliot

When a great poet has lived, certain things have been done once for all, and cannot be achieved again. — T. S. Eliot

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. — T. S. Eliot

No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. — T. S. Eliot

Yeats was the greatest poet of our times . . . certainly the greatest in this language, and so far as I am able to judge, in any language. — T. S. Eliot

Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry. — T. S. Eliot

Maturing as a poet means maturing as the whole man, experiencing new emotions appropriate to one’s age, and with the same intensity as the emotions of youth. — T. S. Eliot

Not only every great poet, but every genuine, but lesser poet, fulfils once for all some possibility of language, and so leaves one possibility less for his successors. — T. S. Eliot

The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. — T. S. Eliot

Taking the question in general, I should say, in the case of many poets, that the most important thing for them to do … is to write as little as possible — T. S. Eliot

The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all. — T. S. Eliot

When a poet’s mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience ?in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes. — T. S. Eliot

Any poet, if he is to survive beyond his 25th year, must alter; he must seek new literary influences; he will have different emotions to express. — T. S. Eliot

Tennyson and Browning are poets, and they think; but they do not feel their thought as immediately as the odour of a rose. A thought to Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility. — T. S. Eliot

Someone said, ‘The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.’ Precisely, and they are that which we know. — T. S. Eliot

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? — T. S. Eliot

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance. — T. S. Eliot

Knowledge is invariably a matter of degree: you cannot put your finger upon even the simplest datum and say this we know. — T. S. Eliot

We should not confuse information with knowledge. — T. S. Eliot

I believe the moment of birth Is when we have knowledge of death I believe the season of birth Is the season of sacrifice. — T. S. Eliot

There is, it seems to us, At best, only a limited value In the knowledge derived from experience. — T. S. Eliot

We can say of Shakespeare, that never has a man turned so little knowledge to such great account. — T. S. Eliot

A toothache, or a violent passion, is not necessarily diminished by our knowledge of its causes, its character, its importance or insignificance. — T. S. Eliot

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions Guides us by vanities. — T. S. Eliot

He had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it — T. S. Eliot

Light Light The visible reminder of Invisible Light. — T. S. Eliot

We see the light but see not whence it comes. O Light Invisible, we glorify Thee! — T. S. Eliot

The darkness declares the glory of light. — T. S. Eliot

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. — T. S. 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. — T. S. Eliot

My life is light, waiting for the death wind, Like a feather on the back of my hand. — T. S. Eliot

In our rhythm of earthly life we tire of light. We are glad when the day ends, when the play ends; and ecstasy is too much pain. — T. S. Eliot

There’s no vocabulary For love within a family, love that’s lived in But not looked at, love within the light of which All else is seen, the love within which All other love finds speech. This love is silent. — T. S. Eliot

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you Which shall be the darkness of God. . . . So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. — T. S. Eliot

Where is all the knowledge we lost with information? — T. S. Eliot

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? — T.S. Eliot

Here were decent godless people; Their only monument the asphalt road And a thousand lost golf balls. — T. S. Eliot

There is no such thing as a lost cause, because there is no such thing as a gained cause — T. S. 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? — T. S. Eliot

O father, father Gone from us, lost to us, The church lies bereft, Alone, Desecrated, desolated. And the heathen shall build On the ruins Their world without God. I see it. I see it. — T. S. Eliot

I think we are in rats’ alley Where the dead men lost their bones. — T. S. Eliot

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices in the lost lilac and the lost sea voices and the weak spirit quickens to rebel for the bent golden–rod and the lost sea smell quickens to recover. — T. S. Eliot