T. S. Eliot Quotes
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Home is where one starts from.
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The river itself has no beginning or end. In its beginning, it is not yet the river; in the end it is no longer the river. What we call the headwaters is only a selection from among the innumerable sources which flow together to compose it. At what point in its course does the Mississippi become what the Mississippi means?
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Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself.
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The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.
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so the countess passed on until she came through the little park, where Niobe presented her with a cabinet, and so departed.
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I learn a great deal by merely observing you, and letting you talk as long as you please, and taking note of what you do not say.
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I shall not want Honor in Heaven For I shall meet Sir Philip Sidney And have talk with Coriolanus And other heroes of that kidney.
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What a poem means is as much what it means to others as what it means to the author; and indeed, in the course of time a poet may become merely reader in respect to his own works, forgetting his original meaning.
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It is only in the world of objects that we have time and space and selves.
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Ash on an old man's sleeve / Is all the ash the burnt roses leave, / Dust in the air suspended / Marks the place where a story ended.
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Turning Wearily, as one would turn to nod goodbye to Rochefoucauld, If the street were time and he as the end of the street.
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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?
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O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.
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When a great poet has lived, certain things have been done once for all, and cannot be achieved again.
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Writing every day is a way of keeping the engine running, and then something good may come out of it.
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To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not / You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
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No scheme for a change of society can be made to appear immediately palatable, except by falsehood, until society has become so desperate that it will accept any change.
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Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.
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Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
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Those who talk of the bible as a monument of English prose are merely admiring it as a monument over the grave of Christianity.
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I say to you: Make perfect your will. / I say: take no thought of the harvest, / But only of proper sowing.
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We can at least try to understand our own motives, passions, and prejudices, so as to be conscious of what we are doing when we apeal to those of others. This is very difficult, because our own prejudice and emotional bias always seems to us so rational.
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If time and space, as sages say, Are things which cannot be, The sun which does not feel decay No greater is than we. So why, Love, should we ever pray To live a century? The butterfly that lives a day Has lived eternity.
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Grishkin is nice: herRussian eye is underlined for emphasis;Uncorseted, her friendly bustGives promise of pneumatic bliss.