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
definitions hell
The definition of hell is a place where nothing connects with nothing.
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.
beach not-wasting-time enjoyed
At the beach - time you enjoyed wasting, is not wasted.
vanity doubt majority
The majority of mankind is lazyminded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith.
broken broken-images waste-land
For you know only a heap of broken images
memories ideas mind
As a rule, with me an unfinished [idea] is a thing that might as well be rubbed out. It's better, if there's something good in it that I might make use of elsewhere, to leave it at the back of my mind than on paper in a drawer. If I leave it in a drawer it remains the same thing but if it's in the memory it becomes transformed into something else.
long desire life-is
life is long between the desire and the spasm.
cracks burden break
Words strain, crack, and sometime break, under the burden.
winter men broken
In spite of all the dishonour, the broken standards, the broken lives, The broken faith in one place or another, There was something left that was more than the tales Of old men on winter evenings.
behave
To become what you are not, behave as you do not.
past littles consciousness
Time past and time future allow but a little consciousness. To be conscious is not to be in time.
health insanity despair
Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair.
fighting expectations alive
We fight to keep something alive rather than in the expectation that anything will triumph.
lonely people laughing
The remarkable thing about television is that it permits several million people to laugh at the same joke and still feel lonely.