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The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have three different names.

— T. S. Eliot Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939)

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Pets

More quotes by T. S. Eliot

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.

Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939)

The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious.

Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

Preface to Transit of Venus: Poems by Harry Crosby (1931)

Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen.

Ash-Wednesday (1930)

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

The Waste Land (1922)

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All breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should not be slain, nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away.

Mahavira

A dog cannot relate his autobiography; however eloquently he may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were honest but poor.

Bertrand Russell Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948)

Histories are more full of Examples of the Fidelity of dogs than of Friends.

Alexander Pope

True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.

Milan Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: T. S. Eliot (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.