T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns Eliot OMwas an American-born British essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic and "one of the twentieth century's major poets". He moved to England in 1914 at age 25, settling, working and marrying there. He was eventually naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39, renouncing his American citizenship...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth26 September 1888
CountryUnited States of America
passion emotional justice
We can at least try to understand our own motives, passions, and prejudices, so as to be conscious of what we are doing when we apeal to those of others. This is very difficult, because our own prejudice and emotional bias always seems to us so rational.
funny humorous way
Humor is also a way of saying something serious.
mountain feels waste-land
In the mountains, there you feel free.
hope lying fire
The only hope, or else despair Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre - To be redeemed from fire by fire.
life wisdom knowledge
Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
stealing-things immature different
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.
book writing silence
And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness.
art artist individual-talent
No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone.
relationship memories people
We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.
mean men age
Maturing as a poet means maturing as the whole man, experiencing new emotions appropriate to one's age, and with the same intensity as the emotions of youth.
time people patterns
A people without history Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern Of timeless moments.
art personality art-is
Art is the escape from personality.
writing poetry feelings
The poet's mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.
moments shocking
Every moment is a new and shocking transvaluation of all we have ever been.