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
Love is most nearly itself when here and now cease to matter.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Romance, Love
For last year’s words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Words
The awful daring of a moment’s surrender which an age of prudence can never retract.
—T. S. Eliot
An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writing
It is not necessarily those lands which are the most fertile or most favored in climate that seem to me the happiest, but those in which a long struggle of adaptation between man and his environment has brought out the best qualities of both.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Happiness, Acceptance
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
What is actual is actual only for one lime, and only for one place.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Change
When we read of human beings behaving in certain ways, with the approval of the author, who gives his benediction to this behavior by his attitude towards the result of the behavior arranged by himself, we can be influenced towards behaving in the same way.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Literature, Books
It seems just possible that a poem might happen to a very young man: but a poem is not poetry—That is a life.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Poetry
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory out of desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in a forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Seasons
What is true, is true only for one time and only for one place.
—T. S. Eliot
It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labor.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Tradition
In the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Culture
You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends, and how, how rare and strange it is, to find in a life composed so much of odds and ends … to find a friend who has these qualities, who has, and gives those qualities upon which friendship lives. How much it means that I say this to you—without these friendships—life, what cauchemar!
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Friendship
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Courage
We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.
—T. S. Eliot
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Writing, Writers, Authors & Writing
There is no method but to be very intelligent.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Science
Art never improves, but the material of art is never quite the same.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Art, Arts, Artists
War is not a life: it is a situation, one which may neither be ignored nor accepted.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: War
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: One liners, Communication, Poetry
We are not here to triumph by fighting, by strata gem, or by resistance, not to fight with beasts as men. We have fought the beast and have conquered. We have only to conquer now, by suffering. This is the easier victory.
—T. S. Eliot
Friendship should be more than biting time can sever.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Friends and Friendship
In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Decision, Decisions, Indecision
You are the music while the music lasts.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Music
To each individual the world will take on a different connotation of meaning-the important lies in the desire to search for an answer.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Knowledge
In my beginning is my end.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Beginnings, Beginning
Those who say they give the public what it wants begin by underestimating public taste and end by debauching it.
—T. S. Eliot
The dream crossed twilight between birth and dying.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Life
What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Moving on, Resilience, Beginnings
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