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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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T. S. Eliot
Age: 76 †
Born: 1888
Born: September 26
Died: 1965
Died: January 4
Critic
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Lyricist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Short Story Writer
Social Critic
St. Louis
Missouri
Thomas Stearns Eliot
Eliot
T S Eliot
Thomas Eliot
T.S. Eliot
Facts
Become
Truth
Truths
Part
Cease
Character
Significant
Best
Private
Worst
Public

More quotes by T. S. Eliot

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Culture is the one thing that we cannot deliberately aim at. It is the product of a variety of more or less harmonious activities, each pursued for its own sake.
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O father, father Gone from us, lost to us, The church lies bereft, Alone, Desecrated, desolated. And the heathen shall build On the ruins Their world without God. I see it. I see it.
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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 aged eagle stretch its wings?) Why should I mourn The vanished power of the usual reign?
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And indeed there will be time to wonder, 'Do I dare?', and 'Do I dare?
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To become what you are not, behave as you do not.
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Composing on the typewriter, I find that I am sloughing off all my long sentences which I used to dote upon. Short, staccato, like modern French prose. The typewriter makes for lucidity, but I am not sure that it encourages subtlety.
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But what have I, but what have I, my friend, To give you, what can you receive from me? Only the friendship and the sympathy Of one about to reach her journey's end.
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Philosophy: a purple bullfinch in a lilac tree.
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No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be: am an attendant lord, one that will do to swell a progress, start a scene or two, advise the prince.
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The hippopotamus's day Is passed in sleep at night he hunts God works in a mysterious way- The Church can sleep and feed at once.
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Poetry is a mug's game.
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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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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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People exercise an unconscious selection in being influenced.
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With cats, some say, one rule is true: Don't speak till you are spoken to.
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As a rule, with me an unfinished [idea] is a thing that might as well be rubbed out. It's better, if there's something good in it that I might make use of elsewhere, to leave it at the back of my mind than on paper in a drawer. If I leave it in a drawer it remains the same thing but if it's in the memory it becomes transformed into something else.
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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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I learn a great deal by merely observing you, and letting you talk as long as you please, and taking note of what you do not say.
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The remarkable thing about television is that it permits several million people to laugh at the same joke and still feel lonely.
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Finding a way to live the simple life is one of life's supreme complications.
T. S. Eliot