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We do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in but its fitting in is a test of its value - a test, it is true, which can only be slowly and cautiously applied, for we are none of us infallible judges of conformity.

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
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Poet
Screenwriter
Short Story Writer
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St. Louis
Missouri
Thomas Stearns Eliot
Eliot
T S Eliot
Thomas Eliot
T.S. Eliot
Value
Conformity
Quite
Slowly
Cautiously
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Test
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True
Tests
Fits
Valuable
Fitting
Fit
Judges
None
Novelty
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Applied

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Hell is oneself, hell is alone, the other figures in it merely projections. There is nothing to escape from and nothing to escape to. One is always alone.
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Everyone's alone - or so it seems to me. They make noises, and think they are talking to each other They make faces, and think they understand each other. And I'm sure they don't. Is that a delusion?
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life is long between the desire and the spasm.
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No place of grace for those who avoid the Face. No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the Voice.
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In a world of fugitives the one who stays home will seem to be running away
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We do not pass twice through the same door Or return to the door through which we did not pass.
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The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.
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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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At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless Neither from nor towards at the still point, there the dance is.
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It is a test (a positive test, I do not assert that it is always valid negatively), that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
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Art is the escape from personality.
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The purpose of a Christian education would not be merely to make men and women pious Christians: a system which aimed too rigidly at this end alone would become only obscurantist. A Christian education must primarily teach people to be able to think in Christian categories.
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That was my way of putting it-not very satisfactory: A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion, Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle With words and meanings.
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No generation is interested in art in quite the same way as any other each generation, like each individual, brings to the contemplation of art its own categories of appreciation, makes its own demands upon art, and has its own uses for art.
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And they write innumerable books being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness.
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A toothache, or a violent passion, is not necessarily diminished by our knowledge of its causes, its character, its importance or insignificance.
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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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