T. S. Eliot Quotes
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If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it offers you.
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Thus with most careful devotion Thus with precise attention To detail, interfering preparation Of that which is already prepared Men lighten the knot of confusion Into perfect misunderstanding, Reflecting a pocket-torch of observation.
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Shall I part my hair behind Do I dare to eat a peach I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.
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A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel reader is not prepared to give.
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The Rum Turn Tugger is a terrible bore: When you let him in, then he wants to be out; He's always on the wrong side of every door, And as soon as he's at home, then he'd like to get about.
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The sense of wellbeing! Its often with us When we are young, but then it's not noticed; And by the time one has grown to consciousness It comes less often.
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The greatness of literature cannot be determined solely by literary standards though we must remember that whether it is literature or not can be determined only by literary standards.
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O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark, The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant
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We had the experience but missed the meaning. And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form.
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I must tell you that I should really like to think there's something wrong with me- Because, if there isn't, then there's something wrong with the world itself-and that's much more frightening! That would be terrible. So I'd rather believe there is something wrong with me, that could be put right.
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That meddling in other people's affairs...formerly conducted by the most discreet intrigue is now openly advocated under the name of intervention.
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I love reading another reader’s list of favorites. Even when I find I do not share their tastes or predilections, I am provoked to compare, contrast, and contradict. It is a most healthy exercise, and one altogether fruitful.
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The destination cannot be described; / You will know very little until you get there; / You will journey blind.
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The overwhelming pressure of mediocrity, sluggish and indomitable as a glacier, will mitigate the most violent, and depress the most exalted revolution.
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Everyone's alone - or so it seems to me. They make noises, and think they are talking to each other; They make faces, and think they understand each other. And I'm sure they don't. Is that a delusion?
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Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden.
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The poet's mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.
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People are only influenced in the direction in which they want to go, and influence consists largely in making them conscious of their wishes to proceed in that direction.
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And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices in the lost lilac and the lost sea voices and the weak spirit quickens to rebel for the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell quickens to recover.
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If we all were judged according to the consequences Of all our words and deeds, beyond the intention And beyond our limited understanding Of ourselves and others, we should all be condemned.
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As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill.
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I believe the moment of birth Is when we have knowledge of death I believe the season of birth Is the season of sacrifice.
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The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence
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Probably, indeed, the larger part of the labor of an author composing his work is critical labor; the labor of sifting, combining, constructing, expunging, correcting, testing. This frightful toil is as much critical as creative.