T. S. Eliot Quotes
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Mistah Kurtz - he dead
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The greatest proof of Christianity for others is not how far a man can logically analyze his reasons for believing, but how far in practice he will stake his life on his belief.
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Those who say they give the public what it wants begin by underestimating public taste and end by debauching it.
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Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall My buried life, and Paris in the spring, I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world To be wonderful and youthful afterall
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To justify Christian morality because it provides a foundation of morality, instead of showing the necessity of Christian morality from the truth of Christianity, is a very dangerous inversion.
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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.
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To country people Cows are mild, And flee from any stick they throw; But I’m a timid town bred child, And all the cattle seem to know.
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That was my way of putting it-not very satisfactory: A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion, Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle With words and meanings.
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It is impossible to say just what I mean!But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:Would it have been worth while If one, settling aPillow or throwing off a shawl,And turning toward the window, should say:'That is not it at all,That is not what I meant, at all.'
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[On The Waste Land:] Various critics have done me the honor to interpret the poem in terms of criticism of the contemporary world, have considered it, indeed, as an important bit of social criticism. To me it was only the relief of a personal and wholly insignificant grouse against life; it is just a piece of rhythmical grumbling.
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I hate university towns and university people, who are the same everywhere, with pregnant wives, sprawling children, many books and hideous pictures on the walls ... Oxford is very pretty, but I don't like to be dead.
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It seems just possible that a poem might happen to a very young man: but a poem is not poetry -That is a life.
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This is the land which ye Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.
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Upon the glazen shelves kept watch Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith The army of unalterable law.
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the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. [He] falls in love or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter, or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes
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At the violet hour, when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a taxi throbbing waiting I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives.
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But it seems that something has happened that has never happened before: though we know not just when, or why, or how, or where.
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When comparing works of art, it is important that the art itself, and not the artists, be considered.
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A philosophy can and must be worked out with the greatest rigour and discipline in the details, but can ultimately be founded on nothing but faith: and this is the reason, I suspect, why the novelties in philosophy are only in elaboration, and never in fundamentals.
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Yeats was the greatest poet of our times . . . certainly the greatest in this language, and so far as I am able to judge, in any language.
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Sister, mother And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea, Suffer me not to be separated And let my cry come unto Thee.
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The dripping blood our only drink, The bloody flesh our only food: In spite of which we like to think That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.
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They don't understand what it is to be awake, / To be living on several planes at once / Though one cannot speak with several voices at once.
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But at my back from time to time I hear The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring. O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter And on her daughter They wash their feet in soda water.