1888-1965, American-born British Poet, Critic
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 – [Plays]
A tradition without intelligence is not worth having.
T. S. Eliot – [Tradition]
All cases are unique and very similar to others.
T. S. Eliot – [Originality]
An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better.
T. S. Eliot – [Editing and Editors]
And what the dead had no speech for, when living, they can tell you, being dead: the communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
T. S. Eliot – [Death and Dying]
April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.
T. S. Eliot – [Spring]
Art never improves, but the material of art is never quite the same.
T. S. Eliot – [Arts and Artists]
Birth, copulation and death. That's all the facts when you come to the brass tacks.
T. S. Eliot – [Life and Living]
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 – [Poetry and Poets]
Footfalls echo in the memory down the passage which we did not take towards the door we never opened into the rose-garden.
T. S. Eliot – [Regret]
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 – [Consequences]
For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice.
T. S. Eliot – [Words]
Friendship should be more than biting time can sever.
T. S. Eliot – [Friends and Friendship]
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
T. S. Eliot – [Communication]
Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them.
T. S. Eliot – [Importance]
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.
T. S. Eliot – [Hell]
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
T. S. Eliot – [Reality]
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 – [Age and Aging]
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
T. S. Eliot – [Futility]
I suppose some editors are failed writers; but so are most writers.
T. S. Eliot – [Editing and Editors]