18 quotes
A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre —
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure,
That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here.
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been.
Every moment is a fresh beginning.
The Cocktail Party (1949)
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker...
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1917)
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end.
Ash-Wednesday (1930)
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?
Ash-Wednesday (1930)
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still. Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.
Ash-Wednesday (1930)
Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn
Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past
Into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrowing rails slide together behind you.
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.