T. S. Eliot - Death Quotes

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Wherever a saint has dwelt, wherever a martyr has given his blood for the blood of Christ,
There is holy ground, and the sanctity shall not depart from it
Though armies trample over it, though sightseers come with guide-books looking over it;
From where the western seas gnaw at the coast of Iona,
To the death in the desert, the prayer in forgotten places by the broken Imperial column,
From such ground springs that which forever renews the earth
Though it is forever denied.

T. S. Eliot
Why should men love the Church? Why should they love her laws?
She tells them of Life and Death, and of all that they would forget.

T. S. Eliot
I am tired with my own life and the lives of those after me,
I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those after me.

T. S. Eliot
Ash on an old man's sleeve
Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.
Dust in the air suspended
Marks the place where a story ended.
Dust inbreathed was a house —
The wall, the wainscot and the mouse The death of hope and despair,
This is the death of air.

T. S. Eliot
God is leaving us, God is leaving us, more pang, more
pain, than birth or death.

T. S. Eliot
There are flood and drouth
Over the eyes and in the mouth,
Dead water and dead sand
Contending for the upper hand.
The parched eviscerate soil
Gapes at the vanity of toil,
Laughs without mirth.
This is the death of the earth.

T. S. Eliot
My life is light, waiting for the death wind, Like a feather on the back of my hand.

T. S. Eliot
Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still. Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

T. S. Eliot
Pain is the opposite of joy,
but joy is a kind of pain
I believe the moment of birth
Is when we have knowledge of death
I believe the season of birth
Is the season of sacrifice

T. S. Eliot
There is one who remembers the way to your door:
Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.
You shall not deny the Stranger.

T. S. Eliot
Water and fire shall rot
The marred foundations we forgot,
Of sanctuary and choir.
This is the death of water and fire.

T. S. Eliot
Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures underground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.

T. S. Eliot
Keeping time,
Keeping the rhythm in their dancing As in their living in the living seasons The time of the seasons and the constellations The time of milking and the time of harvest The time of the coupling of man and woman And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling.
Eating and drinking. Dung and death.

T. S. Eliot
There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death
But had thought they were different.

T. S. Eliot
I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled.

T. S. Eliot
You think me reckless, desperate and mad.
You argue by results, as this world does,
To settle if an act be good or bad.
You defer to the fact. 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.
It is not in time that my death shall be known;
It is out of time that my decision is taken
If you call that decision
To which my whole being gives entire consent.
I give my life
To the Law of God above the Law of Man.
Those who do not the same
How should they know what I do?

T. S. Eliot
Unreal city,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.

T. S. Eliot
The death of hope and despair,
This is the death of air.

T. S. Eliot
Birth, and copulation, and death.
That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks:
Birth, and copulation, and death.
I've been born, and once is enough.

T. S. Eliot
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