At some point in everyone’s life, there comes a time when the pain becomes too much to handle, and the misery of life ascends to a great deal of sorrow. At this point, art sustains the tiny fractional beauty of life, proclaiming peace in this chaos. Poetry is a huge part of it, as it explains the complex mechanisms of the universe and the human heart. With such belief in his heart and faith in his words, T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) became the most influential poet of the twentieth century. He was one the most quotable poets of the modern age, as just twirling a hand into his ocean of poems can give you a sack full of memorable lines and quotes. To better understand his work, we have put together these top 20 T S Eliot quotes that will provide you with a perspective toward ideal concepts of life, humanizing them for you.
T. S. Eliot Quotes on love
- “For the first and last time, praying that I have given no offense. For I see nothing in this confusion to be ashamed of – my love is as pure as any love can be.”
- “Love compels cruelty to those who do not understand love”
- “I tried to pretend that my love for you was dead, though I could only do so by pretending myself that my heart was dead.”
- “If this is a love letter it is the last I shall ever write in my life. And I will sign it.”
T. S. Eliot Quotes about time
- “If all time is eternally present, all time is unredeemable.”
- “Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.”
- “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.”
- “I don’t believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age, one stands still and stagnates.”
- “Time past and time future what might have been and what has been point to one end, which is always present.”
T. S. Eliot Quotes on Death
- “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.”
- “I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different.”
- “My life is light, waiting for the death wind, like a feather on the back of my hand.”
- “It is worthwhile dying, to find out what life is.”
- “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.”
- “It takes so many years to learn that one is dead.”
T. S. Eliot Quotes about Writing
- “Writing every day is a way of keeping the engine running, and then something good may come out of it.”
- “The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.”
- “The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man.”
- “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”
- “We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion.”
Summarizing T. S. Eliot in a few lines would be nearly impossible as his knowledge of literature intact with human emotions, justifies life itself. It was only fair that a work like this has been translated into more than twenty languages. His poetry played a key role in the literary transition from 19th-century Romantic poetry to 20th-century Modernist poetry. There is a lot to take from these selectively picked T S Eliot Quotes. Or maybe, they are just a reason to find pure happiness and innocent pleasure, like a child smiling at the sky while swinging in a park.
Also Read: 15 Noble Buddha Quotes about Life to Cherish Enlightenment
