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Because I do not hope to turn again Because I do not hope Because I do not hope to turn Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope I no longer strive to strive towards such things (Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?) Why should I mourn The vanished power of the usual reign?
T. S. Eliot
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A national culture, if it is to flourish, should be a constellation of cultures, the constitutes of which, benefiting each other, benefit the whole.
T. S. Eliot
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The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.
T. S. Eliot
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The majority of mankind is lazy-minded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith; and when the ordinary man calls himself a sceptic or an unbeliever, that is ordinarily a simple pose, cloaking a disinclination to think anything out to a conclusion.
T. S. Eliot
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Old Deuteronomy's lived a long time; He's a Cat who has lived many lives in succession. He was famous in proverb and famous in rhyme A long while before Queen Victoria's accession.
T. S. Eliot
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If you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human being can pour out for you, let a young mother hear you call dear baby 'it.'
T. S. Eliot
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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.
T. S. Eliot
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Playwriting gets into your blood and you can't stop it. At least not until the producers or the public tell you to.
T. S. Eliot
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The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious.
T. S. Eliot
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Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
T. S. Eliot
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Those who have crossedWith direct eyes, to death's other KingdomRemember us - if at all - not as lostViolent souls, but onlyAs the hollow menThe stuffed men.
T. S. Eliot
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So I find words I never thought to speak In streets I never thought I should revisit When I left my body on a distant shore.
T. S. Eliot
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We see the light but see not whence it comes. O Light Invisible, we glorify Thee!
T. S. Eliot
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Here I am, an old man in a dry month, Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.
T. S. Eliot
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I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots;Her coat is one of the tabby kind,with tiger stripes and lepard spots.
T. S. Eliot
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Today, you're halfway to 100! Here's to optimism, whether it is realistic or not. Happy 50th birthday!
T. S. Eliot
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The broad-backed hippopotamusRests on his belly in the mud;Although he seems so firm to usHe is merely flesh and blood.
T. S. Eliot
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Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
T. S. Eliot
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O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart: for the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.
T. S. Eliot
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I don't believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates.
T. S. Eliot
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And I have known the eyes already, known them all - The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,Then how should I beginTo spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
T. S. Eliot
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All significant truths are private truths. As they become public they cease to become truths; they become facts, or at best, part of the public character; or at worst, catchwords.
T. S. Eliot
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A good deal of confusion could be avoided, if we refrained from setting before the group, what can be the aim only of the individual; and before society as a whole, what can be the aim only of the group.
T. S. Eliot
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If we are moved by a poem, it has meant something, perhaps something important, to us; if we are not moved, then it is, as poetry, meaningless.
T. S. Eliot
