John > John's Quotes

“For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“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, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
― Harry Crosby, Transit of Venus

“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.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party

“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
― T.S. Eliot

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

“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)”
― T.S. Eliot

“Half 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. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”
― T.S. Eliot

“These fragments I have shored against my ruins”
― T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land and Other Poems

“It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous.
Resign yourself to be the fool you are...
...We must always take risks. That is our destiny...”
― T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party

“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

“Distracted from distraction by distraction”
― T.S. Eliot

“Success is relative. It is what we make of the mess we have made of things.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair.”
― T.S. Eliot.

“I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.”
― 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 must tell you that I should really like to think there's something wrong with me- Because, if there isn't, then there's something wrong with the world itself-and that's much more frightening! That would be terrible. So I'd rather believe there is something wrong with me, that could be put right.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party

“The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Teach us to care and not to care”
― T.S. Eliot

“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.”
― T.S. Eliot

“We don't actually fear death, we fear that no one will notice our absence, that we will disappear without a trace.”
― t.s. eliot

“There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.”
― 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

“Humor is also a way of saying something serious.”
― T.S. Eliot

“I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems

“For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”
― T.S. Eliot

“People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events.”
― 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, Four Quartets

“This is one moment, / But know that another / Shall pierce you with a sudden painful joy.”
― T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral