On January 4, 1965, the American-born English poet T. S. Eliot
died in London. One of the greatest poets of all time, Eliot also
excelled as a playwright, a literary critic, and an editor. A leader
of the modernist movement in poetry, his works (like "The Waste
Land" and "Four Quartets") revitalized English poetry and helped
Eliot win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948. A chiastic line from
"The Confidential Clerk" could almost have been a motto for him:

"If you haven't the strength
to impose your own terms upon life,
you must accept the terms life offers you."

Eliot also authored some memorable examples of oxymoronica,
once describing "television" this way:

"A medium of entertainment which permits millions
of people to listen to the same joke at the same time,
and yet remain lonesome."

A classic passage from his 1942 poem "Little Giddings" contained
both chiastic and oxymoronic elements:

"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."