Who is Ts Eliot
TS Eliot, the American poet, essayist and playwright was born Thomas Stearns Elion on the 26th September 1888 and died on the 4th January 1965. He was born in St Louis, growing up in the United States but decided in his early 20s to move to England, settling down to work and start a family there. He made the decision to become a full British citizen in 1927 and as a result, renouncing his citizenship of the United States.
Eliot is considered as one of the most prolific and important poets of the 20th century, with his early work titled ‘The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock’ winning acclaim and widespread popularity. It has been labelled as an iconic piece of work from the Modernist movement and his subsequent pieces are perhaps even more well known, including The Waste Land and Ash Wednesday.
Away from poetry, TS Eliot was a talented playwright, creating seven plays including The Cocktail Party in 1949. Perhaps his highest accolade was winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. Eliot is a pioneer of poetry, applauded for his masterpieces and revered to this day by creative writers and essayists across the world.
Ts Eliot Quotes
1. For last year’s words belong to last year’s language And next year’s words await another voice.
2. Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
3. To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.
4. Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.
6. I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
7. 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.
8. The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man
9. Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.
10. Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
11. If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?
12. I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
13. Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
14. There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.
15. Unreal friendship may turn to real But real friendship, once ended, cannot be mended
16. You are the music while the music lasts.
17. If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it offers you.
18. Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden.
19. 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.
20. What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.
21. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.
22. Anxiety is the handmaiden of creativity
23. Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
24. Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
25. These fragments I have shored against my ruins
26. Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these.
27. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us… and we drown.
28. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
29. The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.
30. Distracted from distraction by distraction
31. For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
32. I learn a great deal by merely observing you, and letting you talk as long as you please, and taking note of what you do not say.
33. Success is relative. It is what we make of the mess we have made of things.
34. I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
35. Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair.
36. I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, and I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, and in short, I was afraid.
37. I must tell you that I should really like to think there’s something wrong with me- Because, if there isn’t, then there’s something wrong with the world itself-and that’s much more frightening! That would be terrible. So I’d rather believe there is something wrong with me, that could be put right.
38. We don’t actually fear death, we fear that no one will notice our absence, that we will disappear without a trace.
39. There is one who remembers the way to your door: Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.
40. 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?
41. We had the experience but missed the meaning. And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form.
42. Teach us to care and not to care
43. I love reading another reader’s list of favorites. Even when I find I do not share their tastes or predilections, I am provoked to compare, contrast, and contradict. It is a most healthy exercise, and one altogether fruitful.
44. An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.
45. There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.
46. I should have been a pair of ragged claws/ Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
47. The last act is the greatest treason. To do the right deed for the wrong reason.
48. For you know only a heap of broken images
49. 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.
50. We read many books, because we cannot know enough people.
51. No one can become really educated without having pursued some study in which he took no interest- for it is a part of education to learn to interest ourselves in subjects for which we have no aptitude.
52. 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.
53. This is one moment, / But know that another / Shall pierce you with a sudden painful joy.
54. It’s not wise to violate the rules until you know how to observe them.
55. I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.
56. Men dislike being awakened from their death in life.
57. People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events.
58. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance
59. I am moved by fancies that are curled, around these images and cling, the notion of some infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing.
60. We must not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.
