“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?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.”
The Rock, Part I (1934)
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T.S. Eliot270
20th century English author 1888–1965Related quotes
“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in infomation?”
T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author
Choruses from The Rock (1934)
Variant: 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?
Context: O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of The Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
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?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.
John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic
Source: The Seven Steps of the Ladder of Spiritual Love, p. 151-2
Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon
Source: Think Big (1996), p. 212
John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic
Quoted in Ruysbroeck the Admirable (1925) by Alfred Wautier d'Aygalliers and Fred Rothwell, p. 175
