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
T. S. Eliot quotes about
depressing mediocrity pressure
The overwhelming pressure of mediocrity, sluggish and indomitable as a glacier, will mitigate the most violent, and depress the most exalted revolution.
appreciation editors criticism
Honest criticism and sensible appreciation are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.
christian atheist perfect
Genuine blasphemy, genuine in spirit and not purely verbal, is the product of partial belief, and is as impossible to the complete atheist as to the perfect Christian.
christianity graves admiring
Those who talk of the bible as a monument of English prose are merely admiring it as a monument over the grave of Christianity.
strong rain men
I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river is a strong brown god-sullen, untamed and intractable, Patient to some degree, at first recognized as a frontier; Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce; Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges. The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten By the dwellers in cities-ever, however, implacable. Keeping his seasons, and rages, destroyer, reminder Of what men choose to forget. Unhonored, unpropitiated By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.
greatness literature determined
The greatness of literature cannot be determined solely by literary standards though we must remember that whether it is literature or not can be determined only by literary standards.
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.
poetry tests genuine
It is a test (a positive test, I do not assert that it is always valid negatively), that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
nature exploration cease
We shall not cease from exploration
life love-is desire
Desire itself is movement Not in itself desirable; Love is itself unmoving, Only the cause and end of movement, Timeless, and undesiring Except in the aspect of time Caught in the form of limitation Between un-being and being.
life dream real
Can we only love Something created in our own imaginations? Are we all in fact unloving and unloveable? Then one is alone, and if one is alone Then lover and beloved are equally unreal And the dreamer is no more real than his dreams.
life mother memories
Lady of silences Calm and distressed Torn and most whole Rose of memory Rose of forgetfulness Exhausted and life-giving Worried reposeful The single Rose Is now the Garden Where all loves end Terminate torment Of love unsatisfied The greater torment Of love satisfied End of the endless Journey to no end Conclusion of all that Is inconclusible Speech without word and Word of no speech Grace to the Mother For the Garden Where all love ends.
life imagination only-love
Can we only love Something created in our own imaginations?
life garden single-rose
The single Rose Is now the Garden Where all loves end