Quotes by T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“In my end is my beginning.”

“We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.”

“The only wisdom we can hope to acquireIs the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.”

“Time present and time pastAre both perhaps present in time futureAnd time future contained in time past.”

“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”

“For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice.”

“Footfalls echo in the memorydown the passage we did not taketowards the door we never openedinto the rose garden. My words echothus, in your mind”

“What was to be the value of the long looked forward to,Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenityAnd the wisdom of age? Had they deceived usOr deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,Bequeathi...”

“The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence”

“There are three conditions which often look alikeYet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachmentFrom self and from things and from p...”

“What the dead had no speech for, when living,They can tell you, being dead: the communicationOf the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.”

“The dove descending breaks the airWith flame of incandescent terrorOf which the tongues declareThe one discharge from sin and error.The only hope, or else despairLies in the choice of pyre or pyre-...”

“A condition of complete simplicity(Costing not less than everything)”