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The greatness of literature cannot be determined solely by literary standards though we must remember that whether it is literature or not can be determined only by literary standards.

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
Must
Determined
Greatness
Standards
Literature
Though
Whether
Cannot
Solely
Remember
Literary

More quotes by T. S. Eliot

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Why should men love the Church? Why should they love her laws? She tells them of Life and Death, and of all that they would forget.
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The circle of our understanding is a very restricted area.
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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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Immature poets imitate mature poets steal.
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All dash to and fro in motor cars. Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere.
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time past and time future what might have been and what has been point to one end, which is always present.
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I am moved by fancies that are curled, around these images and cling, the notion of some infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing.
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If you find examples of humanism which are anti-religious, or at least in opposition to the religious faith of the place and time, then such humanism is purely destructive, for it has never found anything to replace what it has destroyed.
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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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Whatever you do, don't whimper, but take the consequences.
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That is the worst moment, when you feel you have lost / The desires for all that was most desirable, / Before you are contented with what you can desire / Before you know what is left to be desired / And you go on wishing that you could desire / What desire has left behind.
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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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It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous. Resign yourself to be the fool you are... ...We must always take risks. That is our destiny.
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What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.
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We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us... and we drown.
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Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
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The majority of poems one outgrows and outlives, as one outgrows and outlives the majority of human passions.
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The nightingales are singing near The Convent of the Sacred Heart, And sang within the bloody wood When Agamemnon cried aloud, And let their liquid siftings fall To stain the stiff dishonored shroud.
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To each individual the world will take on a different connotation of meaning-the important lies in the desire to search for an answer.
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It seems just possible that a poem might happen to a very young man: but a poem is not poetry -That is a life.
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