Skip to content

Quotes from Choruses from The Rock — T. S. Eliot

1888–1965 England

← All quotes by T. S. Eliot

27 quotes

Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

I say to you: Make perfect your will.
I say: take no thought of the harvest,
But only of proper sowing.

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

What life have you, if you have not life together?
There is not life that is not in community,
And no community not lived in praise of God.

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

The soul of Man must quicken to creation.

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

The work of creation is never without travail.

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

What have we to do but stand with empty hands and palms turned upwards in an age which advances progressively backwards?

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

Much to cast down, much to build, much to restore.

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

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?

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

In the vacant places
We will build with new bricks

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

I have given you the power of choice, and you only alternate
Between futile speculation and unconsidered action.

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

There is one who remembers the way to your door:
Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.
You shall not deny the Stranger.

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

Let me show you the work of the humble. Listen.

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

The world turns and the world changes,
But one thing does not change.
In all of my years, one thing does not change,
However you disguise it, this thing does not change:
The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

And the wind shall say: "Here were decent godless people:
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls."

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

They constantly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.
But the man that is shall shadow
The man that pretends to be.

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

Our age is an age of moderate virtue
And moderate vice

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

Light
Light
The visible reminder of Invisible Light.

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

We see the light but see not whence it comes.
O Light Invisible, we glorify Thee!

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

You neglect and belittle the desert.
The desert is not remote in southern tropics
The desert is not only around the corner,
The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you,
The desert is in the heart of your brother.

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

There came one who spoke of the shame of Jerusalem
And the holy places defiled;
Peter the Hermit, scourging with words.
And among his hearers were a few good men,
Many who were evil,
And most who were neither,
Like all men in all places.

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: T. S. Eliot (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.