T. S. Eliot Quotes
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Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity, He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
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I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different.
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Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only The wind will listen.
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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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There is no absolute point of view from which real and ideal can be finally separated and labelled.
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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.
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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
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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.
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Knowledge is invariably a matter of degree: you cannot put your finger upon even the simplest datum and say this we know.
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Sensibility alters from generation to generation in everybody, whether we will or no; but expression is only altered by a man of genius.
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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.
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Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them.
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There is no method but to be very intelligent.
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People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events.
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We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?
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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.
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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.
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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!!
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Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable.
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He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:At whatever time the deed took place-Macavity wasn't there.