“For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden.”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“In my end is my beginning.”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years-
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres-
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholy new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate - but there is no competition -
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“Footfalls echo in the memory
down the passage we did not take
towards the door we never opened
into the rose garden. My words echo
thus, in your mind”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“time past and time future
what might have been and what has been
point to one end, which is always present.”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“I am glad you have a Cat, but I do not believe it is So remarkable a cat as My Cat.”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“Only through time time is conquered”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment
From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference, ... .”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.
The houses are all gone under the sea.
The dancers are all gone under the hill.”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“Do not let me hear
Of 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.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it agian? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“Or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“I do not know much about gods;but I think that the river is a strong brown god-sullen, untamed and intractable . . .”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“At the still point, there the dance is.”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“Time present and time past / are both perhaps present in time future.”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“What was to be the value of the long looked forward to,
Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenity
And the wisdom of age? Had they deceived us
Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,
Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?
The serenity only a deliberate hebetude,
The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secrets
Useless in the darkness into which they peered
Or from which they turned their eyes. There is, it seems to us,
At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been. We are only undeceived
Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
“that which is only living
Can only die”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Four Quartets
T.S. Eliot
Born place: in St. Louis, Missouri, The United States
Born date September 26, 1888
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This World We Live I...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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