T S Eliot

T S Eliot (1888 – 1965), full name Thomas Stearns Eliot, born in USA but became a naturalised British citizen, was an English poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor. He is one of the greatest poets and critics of 20th century.

Wisdom & Quotes

• This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper. - The Hollow Men

• We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw, Alas!
- The Hollow Men

• “For last year's words belong to last year's language

And next year's words await another voice.” ― Four Quartets

• Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

• “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
• “To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.”

― The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

• April is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
- The Waste Land

• In my beginning is my end.

- East Coker

• Teach us to care and not to care.

Teach us to sit still.
- Ash Wednesday

• The number of people in possession of any criteria for discriminating between good and evil is very small.

- Virginia lectures, 1933

• Hell is oneself.

- The Cocktail Party

• History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors and issues.
• This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.
- The Hollow Men

• Home is where one starts from.

- East Coker

• I grow old... I grow old...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
- The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock

• I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

- The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock

• In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.
- The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock

• Any man might do a girl in

Any man has to, needs to wants to
Once in a lifetime, do a girl in.
- Sweeney Agonistes

• Birth, copulation, and death.

That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks.
- Sweeney Agonistes

• A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year.
- Journey of the Magi

• Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rosegarden.
- Burnt Norton in Four Quartets

• Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
- Burnt Norton in Four Quartets

• The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion.

- Hamlet

• Half of the harm that is done in this world

Is due to people who want to feel important.
- The Cocktail Party

• Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

- Dante

• Humankind

Cannot bear very much reality.
- Murder in the Cathedral

Henry Agard Wallace