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
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
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
“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) <br class="br">Source: Four Quartets <br class="br">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!!
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.
