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T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot Quotes

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Famous T. S. Eliot Quotes

“the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. [He] falls in love or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter, or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes”

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Book:The Sacred Wood and Major Early Essays
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“When oxygen and sulphur dioxide are mixed in the presence of a filiament of platinum, they form sulphurous acid. This combination takes place only if the platinum is present; nevertheless the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is apparently unaffected: has remained inert, neutral, and unchanged. The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum.”

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Book:Selected essays
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“One of the surest tests of the superiority or inferiority of a poet is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.”

WayArtDifferentWholeFeelingsLanguageInterestPoetUniqueTestsStealingAliensMatureDiverseSuperiorityTornGreat ArtTheftSomething BetterGreat ArtistInferiorityImmatureGood ArtCohesionGood ArtistBeing ImmatureStealing Things
Author:T. S. Eliot
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“The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an "objective correlative"; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula for that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.”

WayArtFactsFormGivenEmotionSituationEventsObjectsParticularFindingsArt IsObjectivesCraftsChainsFormulasSensoryChain Of EventsExpressing Emotions
Author:T. S. Eliot
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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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Author:T. S. Eliot
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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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Book:The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism: Studies in the Relation of Criticism to Poetry in England
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