813 Quotes by T. S. Eliot

People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events.

The endless cycle of idea and action, / Endless invention, endless experiment, / Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; / Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; / Knowledge of words, and ignorance of The Word.

We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.

The majority of mankind is lazyminded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith.

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark, The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant

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

Where there is no temple there shall be no homes.

Composing on the typewriter, I find that I am sloughing off all my long sentences which I used to dote upon. Short, staccato, like modern French prose. The typewriter makes for lucidity, but I am not sure that it encourages subtlety.

Honest criticism and sensible appreciation are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.