Quotes about Poetry by Thomas Stearns Eliot

Thomas Stearns Eliot English poet, dramatist and literary critic

Any poet, if he is to survive beyond his 25th year, must alter; he must seek new literary influences; he will have different emotions to express.

Quote by Thomas Stearns Eliot about poetry

As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.

Quote by Thomas Stearns Eliot about poetry

Genuine poetry can communicate the feeling before it is understood.

Quote by Thomas Stearns Eliot about poetry

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal

Quote by Thomas Stearns Eliot about poetry

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from...

Quote by Thomas Stearns Eliot about poetry

Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.

Quote by Thomas Stearns Eliot about poetry

Poetry should help, not only to refine the language of the time, but to prevent it from changing too rapidly.

Quote by Thomas Stearns Eliot about poetry

The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious.

Quote by Thomas Stearns Eliot about poetry

The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all.

Quote by Thomas Stearns Eliot about poetry

The most important thing for poets to do is to write as little as possible.

Quote by Thomas Stearns Eliot about poetry