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
We must believe that “emotion recollected in tranquility” is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor without distortion of meaning, tranquility. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration of a very great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not “recollected” and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is “tranquil” only in that it is a passive attending upon the event.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Poetry
It is only in the world of objects that we have time and space and selves.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Space
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: Value of Time, Time Management, Happiness
All cases are unique and very similar to others.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Originality, Innovation
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
Poetry should help, not only to refine the language of the time, but to prevent it from changing too rapidly.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Poetry, Language
We do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test of its value—a test, it is true, which can only be slowly and cautiously applied, for we are none of us infallible judges of conformity.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Fashion
One starts an action simply because one must do something.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Motivation, Secrets of Success
Birth, copulation and death. That’s all the facts when you come to the brass tacks.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Life, Living
Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Pride
Friendship should be more than biting time can sever.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Friends and Friendship
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: Worth, Greatness, Consequences, Responsibility
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Reality
What is true, is true only for one time and only for one place.
—T. S. Eliot
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: One liners, Communication, Poetry
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.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Consequences
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: Age, Aging
Love is most nearly itself when here and now cease to matter.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Romance, Love
Those who say they give the public what it wants begin by underestimating public taste and end by debauching it.
—T. S. Eliot
Humility is the most difficult of all virtues to achieve; nothing dies harder than the desire to think well of oneself.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Humility
A book is not harmless merely because no one is consciously offended by it.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Books
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
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: Poetry, Poets
And the wind shall say “Here were decent godless people;
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls”.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Civilization
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: Poets, 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
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Trying
The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Right, Deeds, Good Deeds, Goodness
Think not forever of yourselves, O Chiefs, nor of your own generation. Think of continuing generations of our families, think of our grandchildren and of those yet unborn, whose faces are coming from beneath the ground.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Peace
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
For last year’s words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Words
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
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
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: Futility, Life
Whatever you think, be sure it is what you think; whatever you want, be sure that is what you want; whatever you feel, be sure that is what you feel.
—T. S. Eliot
The young feel tired at the end of an action, the old at the beginning.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Time, Youth
Hell is oneself, hell is alone, the other figures in it merely projections. There is nothing to escape from and nothing to escape to. One is always alone.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Hell
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Courage
Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs, rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys, advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm, retreating to the corner of arm and knee, eager to be reassured, taking pleasure in the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree.
—T. S. Eliot
Topics: Babies, Family
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
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