Quotes from T.S. Eliot

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; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume?

When lovely lady stoops to folly And finds too late that men betray, She brushes her hair with automatic hand And puts a record on the gramophone.

Although I do not hope to turn again Although I do not hope Although I do not hope to turn

What life have you if you have not life together?

Let us go then you and I When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table.

There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; 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.

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind Cannot bear very much reality. Time past and time future What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present.

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid. And

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. (It's not the main point of the poem, but I am the third generation of my family who's never been able to eat a peach without wondering, do I dare and do I dare)

We are not here to triumph by fighting, by stratagem, or by resistance, Not to fight with beasts as men. We have fought the beast And have conquered. We have only to conquer Now, by suffering.

In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo

Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember us — if at all — not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.

What we call the beginning is often the end And to make and end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. — T.S. Eliot, from "Little Gidding," Four Quartets . (Faber & Faber 1959) Originally published 1943.

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.

Old men ought to be explorers Here and there does not matter We must be still and still moving Into another intensity For a further union, a deeper communion Through the dark cold and the empty desolation, The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters Of the petrel and the porpoise.

This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised

The Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying within and attacked from without; For this is the law of life; and you must remember that while there is time of prosperity The people will neglect the Temple, and in time of adversity they will decry it.

You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure, That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here.

And for a hundred visions and revisions

You are the consciousness of your unhappy family. Its bird sent flying through the purgatorial flame.

the communication Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.

She never wanted Harry's relations or Harry's old friends; She never wanted to fit herself to Harry, But only to bring Harry down to her own level.

We know too much, and are convinced of too little.

I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it Since what is kept must be adulterated?