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It is not enough to understand what we ought to be, unless we know what we are; and we do not understand what we are, unless we know what we ought to be.
T. S. Eliot
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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.
T. S. Eliot
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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.
T. S. Eliot
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We are not here to triumph by fighting, by strata gem, or by resistance, not to fight with beasts as men. We have fought the beast and have conquered. We have only to conquer now, by suffering. This is the easier victory.
T. S. Eliot
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When a great poet has lived, certain things have been done once for all, and cannot be achieved again.
T. S. Eliot
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I am glad you have a Cat, but I do not believe it is So remarkable a cat as My Cat. My Cat is a Lilliecat Hubvously. What a lilliecat it is. There never was such a Lilliecat. Its Name is JELLYORUM and its one Idea is to be Usefull!!
T. S. Eliot
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People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events.
T. S. Eliot
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It is obvious that we can no more explain a passion to a person who has never experienced it than we can explain light to the blind.
T. S. Eliot
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Atheism should always be encouraged (i.e. rationalistic not emotional atheism) for the sake of the Faith.
T. S. Eliot
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Who is the third who walks always beside you When I count, there are only you and I together But when I look ahead up the white road There is always another one walking beside you
T. S. Eliot
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There is not a more repulsive spectacle than on old man who will not forsake the world, which has already forsaken him.
T. S. Eliot
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Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
T. S. Eliot
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Between the ideaAnd the realityBetween the motionAnd the actFalls the Shadow
T. S. Eliot
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Because I cannot hope to turn again Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something Upon which to rejoice
T. S. Eliot
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Nothing pleases people more than to go on thinking what they have always thought, and at the same time imagine that they are thinking something new and daring: it combines the advantage of
T. S. Eliot
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I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different.
T. S. Eliot
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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.
T. S. Eliot
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I am no prophet - and here's no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,And in short, I was afraid.
T. S. Eliot
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We ask only to be reassured About the noises in the cellar And the window that should not have been open
T. S. Eliot
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Each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling.
T. S. Eliot
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I think it was rather an advantage not having any living poets in England or America in whom one took any particular interest. I don't know what it would be like but I think it would be a rather troublesome distraction to have such a lot of dominating presences, as you call them, about. Fortunately we weren't bothered by each other.
T. S. Eliot
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Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only The wind will listen.
T. S. Eliot
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Mr. Aldous Huxley, who is perhaps one of those people who have to perpetrate thirty bad novels before producing a good one, has a certain natural - but little developed - aptitude for seriousness.
T. S. Eliot
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There is no absolute point of view from which real and ideal can be finally separated and labelled.
T. S. Eliot
