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
ignorance order way
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not, You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy. In order to arrive at what you do not know You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance. In order to possess what you do not possess You must go by the way of dispossession. In order to arrive at what you are not You must go through the way in which you are not. And what you do not know is the only thing you know And what you own is what you do not own And where you are is where you are not.
order civilization language
Poets in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be difficult...The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into its meaning.
order way quartets
In order to arrive at what you are not, you must go through the way in which you are not.
order way quartets
In order to possess what you do not possess, you must go by the way of dispossession.
british-author
I like not only to be loved, but to be told I am loved.
age awful daring prudence surrender
The awful daring of a moment's surrender which an age of prudence can never retract.
decisions minute time
In a minute there is time for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
fare
Not fare well, / But fare forward, voyagers.
beyond communication dead death fire language speech
And what the dead had no speech for, when living, they can tell you, being dead: the communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
further
And we must think no further of you.
act falls motion reality
Between the idea / And the reality / Between the motion / And the act / Falls the Shadow.
hair hear latest pole transmit
To hear the latest Pole / transmit the Preludes, through his hair and fingertips.
below saw second shape turned turning twisted
At the first turning of the second stair / I turned and saw below / The same shape twisted on the banister.
family finds light lived looked love vocabulary within
There's no vocabulary For love within a family, love that's lived in But not looked at, love within the light of which All else is seen, the love within which All other love finds speech. This love is silent.