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The endless cycle of idea and action, / Endless invention, endless experiment, / Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness / Knowledge of speech, but not of silence / Knowledge of words, and ignorance of The Word.

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
Silence
Contemplation
Word
Motion
Knowledge
Experiments
Words
Invention
Idea
Endless
Cycle
Action
Brings
Stillness
Ideas
Ignorance
Experiment
Speech
Cycles

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Every nation, every race, has not only its own creative, but its own critical turn of mind and is even more oblivious of the shortcomings and limitations of its critical habits than of those of its creative genius.
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We see the light but see not whence it comes. O Light Invisible, we glorify Thee!
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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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I think we are in rats’ alley Where the dead men lost their bones.
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The only hope, or else despair Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre - To be redeemed from fire by fire.
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Hurry up, please, its time.
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And right action is freedom From past and future also.
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Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.
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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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Our difficulties of the moment must always be dealt with somehow, but our permanent difficulties are difficulties of every moment.
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A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything)
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All time is eternal, moving inexorably toward an end which we believe is a result of our actions, but over which our control is mere illusion.
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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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There is no absolute point of view from which real and ideal can be finally separated and labelled.
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To men of a certain type The suspicion that they are incapable of loving Is as disturbing to their self-esteem As, in cruder men, the fear of impotence.
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It is self-evident that St. Louis affected me more deeply than any other environment has ever done. I feel that there is something in having passed one's childhood beside the big river, which is incommunicable to those people who have not. I consider myself fortunate to have been born here, rather than in Boston, or New York, or London.
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Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
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