TS Eliot, who died today in 1965, was one of the greatest poets writing in English in the 20th century, if not the greatest. Born in America, he moved to Britain when he was 25 and became a British citizen a few years later. His work profoundly influenced the life and thought of his time and fed the spirits of countless readers.
Poems like The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock and The Waste Land, with the astonishing Four Quartets, are monuments to his extraordinary imagination and insight. He was also a playwright who produced works including Murder in the Cathedral, about the death of Archbishop Thomas Beckett. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948 "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry".
Eliot was also a committed Christian, becoming an Anglican in 1927. He said of himself that he had "a Catholic cast of mind, a Calvinist heritage, and a Puritanical temperament". Many of his poems and other writings explore themes of faith and belief.
He also wrote Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, the basis for a famous Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.
Here are 10 quotes from TS Eliot's works.
1. The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.(Choruses from The Rock),
2. Where is the life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? (Choruses from The Rock).
3. I have measured out my life with coffee spoons (The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock).
4. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper (The Hollow Men).
5. Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go (Preface to Harry Crosby, Transit of Venus).
6. I will show you fear in a handful of dust (The Waste Land).
7. The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason (Murder in the Cathedral).
8. The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed (The Waste Land).
9. 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 (Little Gidding).
10. Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will (Ash-Wednesday).
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