T. S. Eliot

About T. S. Eliot

Inception: 1962

Notable quotes

“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.”
— "Philip Massinger", a biographical essay, in The Sacred Wood (1920)
“It is self-evident that St. Louis affected me more deeply than any other environment has ever done. I feel that there is something in having passed one's childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those people who have not. I consider myself fortunate to have been born here, rather than in Boston, or New York, or London.”
— Letter to Marquis Childs quoted in St. Louis Post Dispatch (15 October 1930) and in the address "American Literature and the American Language" delivered at Washington University (9 June 1953) published in Washington University Studies, New Series: Literature and Language, no. 23 (St. Louis : Washington University Press, 1953), p. 6
“Long ago I studied the ancient Indian languages, and while I was chiefly interested at that time in philosophy, I read a little poetry too; and I know that my own poetry shows the influence of Indian thought and sensibility.”
— Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948)
“Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature, will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. And the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities.”
— Part I
“Much to cast down, much to build, much to restore.”
— II
“[A] wrong attitude towards nature implies, somewhere, a wrong attitude towards God.”
— Ch. IV, p. 62

Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.