20th century Britain saw the emergence of one of the most ground-breaking poets in English literature in Thomas Stearns Eliot. An essayist, poet, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic by profession, Eliot first rose to prominence with his maiden poem, ‘The Love Story of J Alfred Prufrock’ attracted widespread attention. The poem was a masterpiece of the Modernist movement and was followed by equally successful poems including his magnum opus, ‘The Waste Land’, which became one of the most talked about poems in literary history, and others such as ‘The Hollow Men’, ‘Ash Wednesday’ and ‘Four Quartets’. It was for his outstanding contribution to modern day poetry that Eliot received the prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature. Most of his poems articulated the disillusionment of a younger post-World War I generation with the values and conventions, both literary and social, of the Victorian era. In addition to being a renowned poet, Eliot was an important playwright, whose verse dramas include ‘Murder in the Cathedral’, ‘The Family Reunion’, and ‘The Cocktail Party’. Eliot’s brilliance at words and thoughts is equally visible in his meaningful quotes that are sure to make you ponder. This collection of quotes by T S Eliot is sure to make you view life with a new perspective!
What is hell? Hell is oneself.
Hell is alone, the other figures in it
Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from
And nothing to escape to. One is always alone.
For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning."
(Little Gidding)
T S Eliot
Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden.
Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still.
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you
I will show you fear in a handful of dust
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.
T S Eliot
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.
My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
'Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.
'What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
'I never know what you are thinking. Think.
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.
T S Eliot
Men dislike being awakened from their death in life.
Someone said, 'The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.' Precisely, and they are that which we know.
T S Eliot
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.
What have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed.
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.
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question
T S Eliot
Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other
Who think the same thoughts without need of speech
Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness...
