Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888–1965) was an American-born British poet, critic, and playwright. He was awarded the 1948 Nobel Prize in Literature and the Order of Merit in 1948.
Born in St Louis, Missouri, and educated at Harvard, the Sorbonne, and Oxford’s Merton College, Eliot is associated with the rise of literary modernism. His landmark poem, The Waste Land (1922,) was one of the central literary landmarks of the 20th century.
In 1927, Eliot became a British citizen. His increasing involvement with Christianity is chronicled in his poetry through The Hollow Men (1925,) The Journey of the Magi (1927,) Ash-Wednesday (1930) and climaxing in Four Quartets (1935–42,) the latter regarded by many scholars as his greatest poetic statement.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by T. S. Eliot
Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Success & Failure, Success
April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Spring, Seasons, Rain
Friendship should be more than biting time can sever.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Friends and Friendship
Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Television
Each venture is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate with shabby equipment always deteriorating in the general mess of imprecision of feeling.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Poetry, Poets
Quick now, here, now, always-
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
—T. S. Eliot
I don’t believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Aging, Age
There is no method but to be very intelligent.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Science
Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important … they do not mean to do harm … they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Consequences, Worth, Responsibility, Greatness
Birth, copulation and death. That’s all the facts when you come to the brass tacks.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Living, Life
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writing, Writers
Love is most nearly itself when here and now cease to matter.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Love, Romance
What is actual is actual only for one lime, and only for one place.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Change
The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Deeds, Goodness, Right, Good Deeds
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.
—T. S. Eliot
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
Topics: Poets, Poetry
I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Dancing, Dance
A play should give you something to think about. When I see a play and understand it the first time, then I know it can’t be much good.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Authors & Writing
In my beginning is my end.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Beginning, Beginnings
An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Writing, Authors & Writing
It’s not wise to violate rules until you know how to observe them.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Revolution
It is only in the world of objects that we have time and space and selves.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Space
In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Decisions, Decision, Indecision
If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it offers you.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Power
War is not a life: it is a situation, one which may neither be ignored nor accepted.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: War
In my end is my beginning.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Death, Beginning, Ending, Dying
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Present, Reality
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be: am an attendant lord, one that will do to swell a progress, start a scene or two, advise the prince.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Futility
Liberty is a different kind of pain from prison.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Liberty, Freedom
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Trying
So far as we are human, what we do must be either evil or good: so far as we do evil or good, we are human: and it is better, in a paradoxical way, to do evil than to do nothing: at least we exist.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Reason, Evil, Thought
What is true, is true only for one time and only for one place.
—T. S. Eliot
For I have known them all already, know them all: have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons; I have measured out my life with coffee spoons … .
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Life, Futility
There are flood and drought 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
Topics: Food
To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Happiness, Time Management, Value of Time
It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labor.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Tradition
The awful daring of a moment’s surrender which an age of prudence can never retract.
—T. S. Eliot
Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Pride
When a poet’s mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experiences.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Poets, 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 we have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these things.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Poetry, Poets, Art
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