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When forced to work within a strict framework, the imagination is taxed to its utmost and will produce its richest ideas. Given total freedom, the work is likely to sprawl.

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
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St. Louis
Missouri
Thomas Stearns Eliot
Eliot
T S Eliot
Thomas Eliot
T.S. Eliot
Likely
Sprawl
Produce
Taxed
Imagination
Richest
Within
Utmost
Freedom
Framework
Given
Strict
Ideas
Forced
Work
Total

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I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you Which shall be the darkness of God. . . . So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
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It's not wise to violate rules until you know how to observe them.
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He is haunted by a demon, a demon against which he feels powerless, because in its first manifestation it has no face, no name, nothing and the words, the poem he makes, are a kind of exorcism of this demon.
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The Civil War is not ended: I question whether any serious civil war ever does end.
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Cats must have three names-an everyday name, such as Peter a more particular, dignified name, such as Quaxo, Bombalurina, or Jellylorum and, thirdly, the name the cat thinks up for himself, his deep and inscrutable singular Name.
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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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Think neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices are fathered by our heroism. Virtues are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
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Now that the lilacs are in bloom She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
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What a poem means is as much what it means to others as what it means to the author and indeed, in the course of time a poet may become merely reader in respect to his own works, forgetting his original meaning.
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Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.
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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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Ash on an old man's sleeve / Is all the ash the burnt roses leave, / Dust in the air suspended / Marks the place where a story ended.
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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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Any religion is forever in danger of petrifaction into mere ritual and habit, though ritual and habit be essential to religion.
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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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Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.
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Hurry up, please, its time.
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No one can become really educated without having pursued some study in which he took no interest- for it is a part of education to learn to interest ourselves in subjects for which we have no aptitude.
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Words move, music moves Only in time but that which is only living Can only die. Words, after speech, reach Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern, Can words or music reach The stillness.
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