Books Quotes by T. S. Eliot

12 Books quotes by T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot’s brief reflections on books distill his modernist perspective into sharp, memorable lines. Though few, each quote captures his belief in the enduring power of literature to order chaos and illuminate the human condition.

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Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.

T. S. Eliot

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We read many books, because we cannot know enough people.

T. S. Eliot

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A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.

T. S. Eliot

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I am an Anglo-Catholic in religion, a classicist in literature and a royalist in politics.

T. S. Eliot

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A book is not harmless merely because no one is consciously offended by it.

T. S. Eliot

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A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel reader is not prepared to give.

T. S. Eliot

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I hate university towns and university people, who are the same everywhere, with pregnant wives, sprawling children, many books and hideous pictures…

T. S. Eliot

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What a poem means is as much what it means to others as what it means to the author; and indeed, in…

T. S. Eliot

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The greatness of literature cannot be determined solely by literary standards though we must remember that whether it is literature or not…

T. S. Eliot

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We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion.

T. S. Eliot

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And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his…

T. S. Eliot

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Probably, indeed, the larger part of the labor of an author composing his work is critical labor; the labor of sifting, combining,…

T. S. Eliot

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More by T. S. Eliot

The Nobel is a ticket to one's own funeral. No one has ever done anything after he got it.

T. S. Eliot

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Dear Mother, I am getting on nicely in my work at the bank, and like it ... I want to find out something about…

T. S. Eliot

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For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, But the faith and the love and the hope are all…

T. S. Eliot

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We must always take risks. That is our destiny.

T. S. Eliot

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All significant truths are private truths. As they become public they cease to become truths; they become facts, or at best, part of the…

T. S. Eliot

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When forced to work within a strict framework, the imagination is taxed to its utmost and will produce its richest ideas. Given total freedom,…

T. S. Eliot

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Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.

T. S. Eliot

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Desire itself is movement Not in itself desirable; Love is itself unmoving, Only the cause and end of movement, Timeless, and undesiring Except in…

T. S. Eliot

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the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. [He] falls in love or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with…

T. S. Eliot