T. S. Eliot

In my beginning is my end.

Let's not be narrow, nasty, and negative.

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.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought.

All significant truths are private truths. As they become public they cease to become truths; they become facts, or at best, part of the public character; or at worst, catchwords.

The Nobel is a ticket to one's own funeral. No one has ever done anything after he got it.

The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious.

Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs, rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys, advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm, retreating to the corner of arm and knee, eager to be reassured, taking pleasure in the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree.

Where there is no temple there shall be no homes.

The soul is so far from being a monad that we have not only to interpret other souls to ourself but to interpret ourself to ourself.

And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness.

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.

There is no absolute point of view from which real and ideal can be finally separated and labelled.

Business today consists in persuading crowds.

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

April is the cruellest month.

There is not a more repulsive spectacle than on old man who will not forsake the world, which has already forsaken him.

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.

Art never improves, but... the material of art is never quite the same.

The most important thing for poets to do is to write as little as possible.

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.

If you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human being can pour out for you, let a young mother hear you call dear baby 'it.'

Playwriting gets into your blood and you can't stop it. At least not until the producers or the public tell you to.

The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.

The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours.

Where is all the knowledge we lost with information?

My greatest trouble is getting the curtain up and down.

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

We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion.

The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.

So the lover must struggle for words.

Our difficulties of the moment must always be dealt with somehow, but our permanent difficulties are difficulties of every moment.

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.

It's strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words.

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

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.

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

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.

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

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

I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different.

The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart: for the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.

Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity.

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.