T. S. Eliot Quotes

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.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

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.

The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.

Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity

These fragments I have shored against my ruins

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

Distracted from distraction by distraction

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these.

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us... and we drown.

For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.

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...