813 Quotes by T. S. Eliot

Distracted from distraction by distraction.

What life have you if you have not life together?

The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living.

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.

Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky.

A martyrdom is always the design of God, for His love of men, to warn them and to lead them, to bring them back to His ways. It is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, and who no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of being a martyr.

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

Many people give the appearance of progress by shedding the prejudices and irrational postulates of one generation only to acquire those of the next.

To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.