Quote

If time and space, as sages say, Are things which cannot be, The sun which does not feel decay No greater is than we. So why, Love, should we ever pray To live a century? The butterfly that lives a day Has lived eternity.

T. S. Eliot

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

T. S. Eliot
Age: 76 †
Born: 1888
Born: September 26
Died: 1965
Died: January 4
Critic
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Lyricist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Short Story Writer
Social Critic
St. Louis
Missouri
Thomas Stearns Eliot
Eliot
T S Eliot
Thomas Eliot
T.S. Eliot
Time
Lives
Pray
Love
Cannot
Eternity
Doe
Praying
Ever
Sun
Live
Lived
Sages
Feel
Century
Sage
Feels
Greater
Butterfly
Things
Space
Decay

More quotes by T. S. Eliot

Image
Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.
T. S. Eliot
Image
In life there is not time to grieve long.
T. S. Eliot
Image
I should have been a pair of ragged claws/ Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
T. S. Eliot
Image
For every life and every act consequence of good and evil can be shown and as in time results of many deeds are blended so good and evil in the end become confounded.
T. S. Eliot
Image
There is no escape from metre there is only mastery.
T. S. Eliot
Image
I am glad you have a Cat, but I do not believe it is So remarkable a cat as My Cat.
T. S. Eliot
Image
The overwhelming pressure of mediocrity, sluggish and indomitable as a glacier, will mitigate the most violent, and depress the most exalted revolution.
T. S. Eliot
Image
and now you live dispersed on ribbon roads, And no man knows or cares who is his neighbor Unless his neighbor makes too much disturbance, But all dash to and fro in motor cars, Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere.
T. S. Eliot
Image
The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours.
T. S. Eliot
Image
Think neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices are fathered by our heroism. Virtues are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
T. S. Eliot
Image
From a purely external point of view there is no will and to find will in any phenomenon requires a certain empathy we observe aman's actions and place ourselves partly but not wholly in his position or we act, and place ourselves partly in the position of an outsider.
T. S. Eliot
Image
Shape without form, shade without color, Paralyzed force, gesture without motion Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember us-if at all-not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.
T. S. Eliot
Image
The naming of cats is a difficult matter. It isn't just one of your holiday games. You may think at first I'm mad as a hatter. When I tell you a cat must have three different names.
T. S. Eliot
Image
Words move, music moves Only in time but that which is only living Can only die. Words, after speech, reach Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern, Can words or music reach The stillness.
T. S. Eliot
Image
Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important.
T. S. Eliot
Image
In the last few years everything I'd done up to sixty or so has seemed very childish.
T. S. Eliot
Image
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.
T. S. Eliot
Image
Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third.
T. S. Eliot
Image
I take as metaphysical poetry that in which what is ordinarily apprehensible only by thought is brought within the grasp of feeling, or that in which what is ordinarily only felt is transformed into thought without ceasing to be feeling.
T. S. Eliot
Image
And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor - And this, and so much more? -
T. S. Eliot