Thomas Stearns Eliot was an American-born British poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor.Born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a prominent Boston Brahmin family, he moved to England in 1914 at the age of 25 and went on to settle, work and marry there. He became a British subject in 1927 at the age of 39, subsequently renouncing his American citizenship.
Considered one of the 20th century’s major poets, Eliot attracted widespread attention for his poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in 1915, which was seen as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement. It was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including “The Waste Land” (1922), “The Hollow Men” (1925), “Ash Wednesday” (1930), and Four Quartets (1943). He was also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and The Cocktail Party (1949). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948, “for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry” (via Wikipedia)
Following are a few of his great quotes:
On Love:
This love is silent.
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
(From: Four Quartets 2: East Coker)Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
(From: Four Quartets 4: Little Gidding)
On Life:
I don’t believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates.
Life is very long.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.
On Knowledge:
Other Quotes:
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.
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.
Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden.
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
You are the music while the music lasts.
Unreal friendship may turn to real
But real friendship, once ended, cannot be mended.