104 Motivational and Inspirational T. S. Eliot Quotes
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Read 104 motivational and inspirational T. S. Eliot quotes about life, time, love, journeys, etc. to discover sophisticated gems of wisdom. T. S. Eliot was an English Nobel Prize-winning poet, dramatist, playwright, and literary critic. He is considered one of the most important poets of the 20th century and a leading figure of the modernist movement in poetry. In 1948 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Among his best-known works are the Love Song of J. Prufrock (1915), The Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), The Four Quartets (1943), and the play Murderer in the Church (1935).
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104 Motivational and Inspirational T. S. Eliot Quotes
Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important.
Every age has its own outlook.
The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.
A man should not be too much of a reformer — nor yet a dreamer.
We are the hollow men. We are the stuffed men.
Passion is the only master worth serving.
April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land.
Between the stuttering and the stain of the heart, something like music arises.
Do not suddenly break the branch.
A crowd of people, walking in another man’s dream.
No one mourns the wicked.
The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
The only way to be sane is to accept the world as it is and then try to change it with patience.
The idle mind is the devil’s workshop; an occupied mind is a sanctuary.
Faith has to do with things that are not provable… the liberation of the human spirit.
Pride is a personal commitment. It is an attitude which separates accomplishments from genuine worth.
The world is not only typified in disasters; sometimes there is a revelation.
What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another.
We must be still and still moving into another intensity for a further union, a deeper communion.
The greatest treason is to perform a right action for the wrong motive.
We are the hollow men, stuffed with straw.
People will accept your ideas more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first.
The true church can never fail; it is based upon a rock.
14 T.S. Eliot Quotes about Life and Reality
“To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.”
“To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.”
“Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.”
“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”
“Between the idea and the reality between the motion and the act falls the shadow.”
“The secret of getting on in life is to deal well with the small things.”
“We must be willing to be interrupted by life.”
“The aim is nothing less than to make life intelligible through art.”
“There is no life that is not a war.”
“We are always getting ready to live but never living.”
“The greatest proof of spiritual life is the power to renounce, not the power to create.”
“To believe in life is to believe in its victories and defeats.”
“The only useful thing that anyone can say is that which is true.”
“If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it offers you.”
9 Quotes about Time
“Respecting the past helps us create a better present.”
“Do I dare disturb the universe? In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.”
“To have that sense of the future is to possess the present more richly.”
“The understanding of the past enables men to perceive the futility of mere repetition.”
“The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion.”
“The knowledge of the past is the only thing that makes the present tolerable.”
“Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future.”
“You will have to live with those memories and make them into something new. Only by acceptance of the past will you alter its meaning.”
“Do not waste time debating what a good person should be. Be one.”
8 Motivational T.S. Eliot Quotes
“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
“The more one is willing to endure, the more one is likely to achieve.”
“There is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”
“What we call experience is only the name men give to their mistakes.”
“You must have long-range goals to keep you from being frustrated by short-range failures.”
“To admit the possibility of failure is to take a great step toward success.”
“For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”
“Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.”
11 Quotes about Wisdom
“Where the the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
“We are not wise by the experience of yesterday; we are wiser by the lessons learned.”
“The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility.”
“Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.”
“Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
“The only wisdom is humility.”
“The final wisdom is to embrace the mystery of being and live fully in the light of it.”
“If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?”
“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gives it to.”
“A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.”
“Whatever you think, be sure it is what you think, whatever you want, be sure that is what you want, whatever you feel, be sure that is what you feel.”
7 Quotes about Travel and Journeys
“To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.”
“The journey, not the arrival, matters.”
“The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
“We do not cease from exploration.”
“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
“If you find no path, you must be the pathfinder.”
“In order to arrive at what you are not, you must go through the way in which you are not.”
12 Quotes about Beginnings and Ends
“Home is where one starts from.”
“Every moment is a fresh beginning.”
“In my beginning is my end.”
“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice.”
“The world ends not with a bang but a whimper.”
“The world ends not with a storm but a stillness.”
“The end of all our striving is only to return and see with new eyes.”
“People strain to the edge of life and do not notice that it is nothing but a beginning.”
“The end is the beginning; the beginning is the end.”
“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”
“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.”
8 T. S. Eliot Quotes on Love and Happiness
“Love is most nearly itself when here and now cease to matter.”
“Love requires thought, courage, and compassion.”
“A love which is not madness is not love.”
“The essential thing is to be able to feel deeply and to act accordingly.”
“The human heart is a complex laboratory where truth and illusion are distilled.”
“The most important thing is to enjoy your life—to be happy—it’s all that matters.”
“To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.”
“The secret of happiness is something to do.”
12 Quotes about Art and Books
“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”
“Art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth-telling.”
“The artist is the person who can perceive the truth and then translate it into something that can be shared.”
“The artist’s task is to find the form which expresses the meaning of the whole.”
“The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.”
“There are no good books which are only about their period.”
“One must be an inventor to read well.”
“Words are always inadequate to express the depth of feeling.”
“A poem can never be a mere record of experience; it must be transformed by the mind into something larger.”
“The task of modern poetry is to find an objective correlative for emotion.”
“The poetry of earth is never dead.”
“One must be still to hear the true music of the heart.”
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