1. For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
2. Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
3. This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
4. To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.
5. 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.
6. Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
7. Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.
8. 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 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.
9. We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.
10. April is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desire, stirring
dull roots with spring rain.
11. The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man
12. 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.
13. Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.
14. Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
15. What is hell? Hell is oneself.
Hell is alone, the other figures in it
Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from
And nothing to escape to. One is always alone.
16. For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.”
(Little Gidding)
17. If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?
18. I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
19. There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.
20. Unreal friendship may turn to real
But real friendship, once ended, cannot be mended
21. Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
22. If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it offers you.
23. Books. Cats. Life is good.
24. We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
– The Hollow Men
25. 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.
26. Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden.
27. Whatever you think, be sure it is what you think; whatever you want, be sure that is what you want; whatever you feel, be sure that is what you feel.
28. What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from
29. Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
30. These fragments I have shored against my ruins
31. 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 emotion know what it means to want to escape from these.
32. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us… and we drown.
33. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
34. The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.
35. Distracted from distraction by distraction
36. Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
37. Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
38. A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
39. For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
40. 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.
41. It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous.
Resign yourself to be the fool you are…
…We must always take risks. That is our destiny.
42. I learn a great deal by merely observing you, and letting you talk as long as you please, and taking note of what you do not say.
43. Success is relative. It is what we make of the mess we have made of things.
44. Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair.
45. 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
46. We don’t actually fear death, we fear that no one will notice our absence, that we will disappear without a trace.
47. I must tell you that I should really like to think there’s something wrong with me- Because, if there isn’t, then there’s something wrong with the world itself-and that’s much more frightening! That would be terrible. So I’d rather believe there is something wrong with me, that could be put right.
48. There is one who remembers the way to your door: Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.
49. At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
50. Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
51. We had the experience but missed the meaning. And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form.
52. Teach us to care and not to care
53. I love reading another reader’s list of favorites. Even when I find I do not share their tastes or predilections, I am provoked to compare, contrast, and contradict. It is a most healthy exercise, and one altogether fruitful
54. I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
55. Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
-But who is that on the other side of you?
56. We do not pass through the same door twice
Or return to the door through which we did not pass
57. An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.
58. There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.
59. Humor is also a way of saying something serious.
60. And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you
I will show you fear in a handful of dust
