Elen Sentier > Elen's Quotes

“For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
― Harry Crosby, Transit of Venus

“Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.”
― T.S. Eliot

“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, 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 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.”
― T.S. Eliot

“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.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party

“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.”
― T.S. Eliot, T. S. Eliot Reading: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Others

“Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”
― T.S. Eliot

“There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.”
― T.S. Eliot.

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.”
― T.S. Eliot

“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.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”
― T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow”
― T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

“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, Four Quartets

“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.”
― T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems

“I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

“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.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“Success is relative. It is what we make of the mess we have made of things.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Teach us to care and not to care”
― T.S. Eliot

“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“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

“An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry. ”
― T.S. Eliot

“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.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems

“We had the experience but missed the meaning. And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form.”
― T.S. Eliot

“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.”
― T.S. Eliot

“We do not pass through the same door twice
Or return to the door through which we did not pass”
― T.S. Eliot

“I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems