The Family Reunion Quotes

“We ask only to be reassured
About the noises in the cellar
And the window that should not have been open”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“In a world of fugitives, the person taking the opposite direction will appear to run away.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“Shall we ever meet again?
And who will meet again?
Meeting is for strangers.
Meeting is for those who do not know each other.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“Thus with most careful devotion
Thus with precise attention
To detail, interfering preparation
Of that which is already prepared
Men tighten the knot of confusion
Into perfect misunderstanding.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“You have gone through life in sleep, Never woken to the nightmare. I tell you, life would be unendurable If you were wide awake.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“They don’t understand what it is to be awake, To be living on several planes at once Though one cannot speak with several voices at once.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“It is not my conscience, Not my mind, that is diseased, but the world I have to live in.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“One thing you cannot know:
The sudden extinction of every alternative, The unexpected crash of the iron cataract. You do not know what hope is, until you have lost it.
You only know what it is not to hope:
You do not know what it is to have hope taken from you Or to fling it away, to join the legion of the hopeless
Unrecognized by other men, though sometimes by each other.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“Whatever you have learned, Harry, you must remember
That there is always more: we cannot rest in being
The impatient spectators of malice or stupidity.
We must try to penetrate the other private worlds
Of make-believe and fear. To rest in our own suffering
Is evasion of suffering. We must learn to suffer more.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“There are certain points I do not yet understand:
They will be clear later. I am also convinced
That you only hold a fragment of the explanation.
It is only because of what you do not understand
That you feel the need to declare what you do.
There is more to understand: hold fast to that
As the way to freedom.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“The things I thought were real are shadows, and the real Are what I thought were private shadows.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“Family affection Was a kind of formal obligation, a duty Only noticed by its neglect.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“The young feel tired at the end of an action— The old, at the beginning.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“Because the particular has no language. One thinks to escape”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“Of the past you can only see what is past, Not what is always present. That is what matters.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“And I hope we can contrive his future happiness. Do not discuss his absence. Please behave only As if nothing had happened in the last eight years.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“Success is relative: It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things, It is what he can make, not what you would make for him.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“This last year, I have been in flight But always in ignorance of invisible pursuers. Now I know that all my life has been a flight”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“Shall we ever meet again? And who will meet again? Meeting is for strangers. Meeting is for those who do not know each other.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“You did not intend this, I did not intend it, No one intended, but . . . You must go.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“Love compels cruelty To those who do not understand love.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“And what did not happen is as true as what did happen,”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“You are the consciousness of your unhappy family. Its bird sent flying through the purgatorial flame.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“I am the old house With the noxious smell and the sorrow before morning, In which all past is present, all degradation Is unredeemable.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“All that I could hope to make you understand Is only events: not what has happened. And people to whom nothing has ever happened Cannot understand the unimportance of events.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“A restless shivering painted shadow In life, she is less than a shadow in death.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“I tell you, it is not me you are looking at,
Not me you are grinning at, not me your confidential looks
Incriminate, but that other person, if person,
You thought I was: let your necrophily
Feed upon that carcase”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“Harry: “I tell you, it is not me you are looking at,
Not me you are grinning at, not me your confidential looks
Incriminate, but that other person, if person,
You thought I was: let your necrophily
Feed upon that carcase”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“I tell you, it is not me you are looking at,
Not me you are grinning at, not me your confidential looks
Incriminate, but that other person, if person,
You thought I was: let your necrophily
Feed upon that carcase”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

“In a world of fugitives
The person taking the opposite direction
Will appear to run away.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion