“Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole”
Ash-Wednesday (1930)
Context: Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.
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T.S. Eliot 270
20th century English author 1888–1965Related quotes
“Let me then remember, to calm my heart's distress,
That the Sages of old were often in like case.”
"Chill and harsh the year draws to its close" (translation by A. Waley)
“The day in his hotness,
The strife with the palm;
The night in her silence,
The stars in their calm.”
Act II
Empedocles on Etna (1852)
“Nanak, the whole world is in distress. He, who believes in the Name, becomes victorious.”
Guru Nanak quotes
“Silence is most powerful. Speech is always less powerful than silence.”
Abide as the Self
Bk. XIV, ch. 1
A paraphrase of the last portion of this has sometimes been cited as a quotation of Melville: God's one and only voice is silence.
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)
Variant: But I hate to hear you talking so like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.
Source: Persuasion
Seward, 617
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Johnsoniana