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"Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature."
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"Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that."
"June had drawn out every leaf on the trees. The mothers of Pimlico gave suck to their young. Messages were passing from the Fleet to the Admiralty. Arlington Street and Piccadilly seemed to chafe the very air in the Park and lift its leaves hotly, brilliantly, on waves of that divine vitality which Clarissa loved. To dance, to ride, she had adored all that."
"As far as now I can tell that most Stephen King fans don't know him well. They have read or viewed few works and their judge is based on them... that's now well knowing a writer!"
"Although I love elegant parties, dancing and dining and spending the night with a sweet woman in my arms, my life belongs to literature."
"Of all public figures and benefactors of mankind, no one is loved by history more than the literary patron. Napoleon was just a general of forgotten battles compared with the queen who paid for Shakespeare's meals and beer in the tavern. The statesman who in his time freed the slaves, even he has a few enemies in posterity, whereas the literary patron has none. We thank Gaius Maecenas for the nobility of soul we attribute to Virgil; but he isn't blamed for the selfishness and egocentricity that the poet possessed. The patron creates 'literature through altruism,' something not even the greatest genius can do with a pen."
"Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack."
"Alexander the Great slept with 'The Iliad' beneath his pillow. Though I've never led an army, I am a wanderer. I cradle 'The Odyssey' nights while the moon is waning, as if it were the sweet body of a woman."
"Gently the waves would break (Lily heard them in her sleep); tenderly the light fell (it seemed to come through her eyelids). And it all looked, Mr. Carmichael thought, shutting his book, falling asleep, much as it used to look years ago."
"I read it a lot, whenever I find it in a library. Partly because I find new things every time I read it, but also because these BOOKS are always there for me. All of them are there for me. My life changes all the time, but books don't change. My reading of them changes-I can bring new things to them each time. But the words are familiar words. The world is a place you've been before, and it welcomes you back."
"This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back again."
Explore more quotes by T. S. Eliot
"Though you forget the way to the Temple,There is one who remembers the way to your door: Life you may evade, but Death you shall not. You shall not deny the Stranger."
"It's strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words."
"The dripping blood our only drink,The bloody flesh our only food:In spite of which we like to thinkThat we are sound, substantial flesh and blood--Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good."
"Do not let me hearOf the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God."
"A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel reader is not prepared to give."
"An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better."
"For I have known them all already, known them all-Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,I have measured out my life with coffee spoons."
"If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spentIf the unheard, unspokenWord is unspoken, unheard;Still is the spoken word, the Word unheard,The Word without a word, the Word withinThe world and for the world;And the light shone in the darkness andAgainst the Word the unstilled world still whirledAbout the center of the silent Word.Oh my people, what have I done unto thee.Where shall the word be found, where shall the wordResound? Not here, there is not enough silence."
"We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion."
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