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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.
T. S. Eliot -
It is in fact a part of the function of education to help us escape, not from our own time - for we are bound by that - but from the intellectual and emotional limitations of our time.
T. S. Eliot
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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.
T. S. Eliot -
Poets in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be difficult...The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into its meaning.
T. S. Eliot -
There is no absolute point of view from which real and ideal can be finally separated and labelled.
T. S. Eliot -
The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do more, and you are not yet decrepit enough to turn them down.
T. S. Eliot -
Atheism should always be encouraged (i.e. rationalistic not emotional atheism) for the sake of the Faith.
T. S. Eliot -
A play should give you something to think about. When I see a play and understand it the first time, then I know it can't be much good.
T. S. Eliot
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There is no method but to be very intelligent.
T. S. Eliot -
We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion.
T. S. Eliot -
April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.
T. S. Eliot -
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 -
If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?
T. S. Eliot -
The most important thing for poets to do is to write as little as possible.
T. S. Eliot
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The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours.
T. S. Eliot -
Then spoke the thunder DA Datta: what have we given? My friend, blood shaking my heart The awful daring of a moment's surrender Which an age of prudence can never retract By this, and this only, we have existed.
T. S. Eliot -
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 -
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 -
Let's not be narrow, nasty, and negative.
T. S. Eliot -
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:At whatever time the deed took place-Macavity wasn't there.
T. S. Eliot
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Our difficulties of the moment must always be dealt with somehow, but our permanent difficulties are difficulties of every moment.
T. S. Eliot -
Grishkin is nice: herRussian eye is underlined for emphasis;Uncorseted, her friendly bustGives promise of pneumatic bliss.
T. S. Eliot -
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 -
Today, you're halfway to 100! Here's to optimism, whether it is realistic or not. Happy 50th birthday!
T. S. Eliot