TS Eliot Quotes: 30 Inspiring Lines That Will Haunt You

T.S. Eliot’s words cut across time: compact aphorisms, haunting images and long, meditative passages that can jolt you into clarity, spur action, or offer quiet consolation. Quotes are tools — use them for morning focus, to steady decisions, to punctuate writing or speech, or to sit with when you need perspective. Below are 30 memorable lines from Eliot’s poems and essays organized to help you find exactly the tone you need.

Motivational quotes

• "Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." — T. S. Eliot
• "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." — T. S. Eliot
• "We had the experience but missed the meaning; an approach to the meaning restores the experience." — T. S. Eliot
• "What we call the beginning is often the end / And to make an end is to make a beginning." — T. S. Eliot
• "Let us go then, you and I" — T. S. Eliot
• "There will be time, there will be time / To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;" — T. S. Eliot

Inspirational quotes

• "Home is where one starts from." — T. S. Eliot
• "So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing." — T. S. Eliot
• "At the still point of the turning world." — T. S. Eliot
• "In my beginning is my end." — T. S. Eliot
• "Because I do not hope to turn again." — T. S. Eliot

Life wisdom quotes

• "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" — T. S. Eliot
• "Between the idea / And the reality / Between the motion / And the act / Falls the Shadow" — T. S. Eliot
• "Footfalls echo in the memory / Down the passage which we did not take" — T. S. Eliot
• "These fragments I have shored against my ruins." — T. S. Eliot
• "Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future" — T. S. Eliot
• "Shape without form, shade without colour, / Paralyzed force, gesture without motion;" — T. S. Eliot

Success & craft quotes

• "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal." — T. S. Eliot
• "Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood." — T. S. Eliot
• "For last year's words belong to last year's language / And next year's words await another voice." — T. S. Eliot
• "April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain." — T. S. Eliot

Reflective & haunting quotes

• "Do I dare to eat a peach?" — T. S. Eliot
• "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons." — T. S. Eliot
• "This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper." — T. S. Eliot
• "Till human voices wake us, and we drown." — T. S. Eliot
• "I will show you fear in a handful of dust." — T. S. Eliot

Daily inspiration quotes

• "The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living." — T. S. Eliot
• "We are the hollow men / We are the stuffed men" — T. S. Eliot
• "A man cannot make good poetry unless he is throughly alive." — T. S. Eliot
• "In my end is my beginning." — T. S. Eliot

Conclusion Quotes like these can act as touchstones — a short line to reframe worry, a phrase to push you toward risk, a couplet that settles in the chest and changes your thinking. Return to them often: read aloud, pin one where you work, or let a line haunt you until it reshapes how you act and see the world.