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
evil way paradoxical
So far as we are human, what we do must be either evil or good: so far as we do evil or good, we are human: and it is better, in a paradoxical way, to do evil than to do nothing: at least we exist.
mean paradox relative
Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself.
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.
questions steel surgeon wounded
The wounded surgeon plies the steel / That questions the distempered part.
edge river sea within
The river is within us, the sea is all about us; The sea is the land's edge also