Quotes from book
Four Quartets

Name: Four Quartets
Author: T.S. Eliot

T.S. Eliot

Four Quartets is a set of four poems written by T. S. Eliot that were published over a six-year period. The first poem, Burnt Norton, was published with a collection of his early works After a few years, Eliot composed the other three poems, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, and Little Gidding, which were written during World War II and the air-raids on Great Britain. They were first published as a series by Faber and Faber in Great Britain between 1940 and 1942 towards the end of Eliot's poetic career The poems were not collected until Eliot's New York publisher printed them together in 1943.

“For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.”

T.S. Eliot book Four Quartets

Variant: 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."

()
Source: Four Quartets

“The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.

The houses are all gone under the sea.

The dancers are all gone under the hill.”

T.S. Eliot book Four Quartets

Source: Four Quartets

“Footfalls echo in the memory
down the passage we did not take
towards the door we never opened
into the rose garden. My words echo
thus, in your mind”

T.S. Eliot book Four Quartets

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

“Only through time time is conquered”

T.S. Eliot book Four Quartets

Source: Four Quartets

“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 book Four Quartets

Variant: We must not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.
Source: Four Quartets

“Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.”

T.S. Eliot book Four Quartets

Source: Four Quartets

“All time is unreedemable.”

T.S. Eliot book Four Quartets

Source: Four Quartets

“In my end is my beginning.”

T.S. Eliot book Four Quartets

Source: Four Quartets

“I am glad you have a Cat, but I do not believe it is So remarkable a cat as My Cat.”

T.S. Eliot book Four Quartets

Letter to his godson, Thomas Erle Faber (January 1931) as quoted in "T.S. Eliot's Private Letters To Faber Publishing Family To Be Sold" at World Collector's Net http://www.worldcollectorsnet.com/news/newstories/news736.html (12 August 2005)
Source: Four Quartets
Context: I am glad you have a Cat, but I do not believe it is So remarkable a cat as My Cat. My Cat is a Lilliecat Hubvously. What a lilliecat it is. There never was such a Lilliecat. Its Name is JELLYORUM and its one Idea is to be Usefull!!

“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”

T.S. Eliot book Four Quartets

Source: Four Quartets

“time past and time future
what might have been and what has been
point to one end, which is always present.”

T.S. Eliot book Four Quartets

Source: Four Quartets

“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.”

T.S. Eliot book Four Quartets

Source: Four Quartets

“The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence”

T.S. Eliot book Four Quartets

Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)
Source: Four Quartets
Context: The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity.