T. S. Eliot Quotes

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.

"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)

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

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. — T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets (Gardners Books; Main edition, April 30, 2001) Originally published 1943.

If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.

Unreal friendship may turn to real
But real friendship, once ended, cannot be mended

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

You are the music while the music lasts.

If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it offers you.

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

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.

Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden.

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.