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
blood theatre producers
Playwriting gets into your blood and you can't stop it. At least not until the producers or the public tell you to.
doors way may
There is one who remembers the way to your door: Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.
real poetry-is assertion
Poetry is not an assertion of truth, but the making of that truth more fully real to us.
games careers may
As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.
beach not-wasting-time enjoyed
At the beach - time you enjoyed wasting, is not wasted.
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.