Quotes to inspire and reflect

Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose garden.

The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

Human kind cannot bear very much reality. 6

They know and do not know, what it is to act or suffer. They know and do not know, that acting is suffering.

Saint and Martyr rule from the tomb.

Stone, bronze, stone, steel, stone, oakleaves, horses’ heels Over the paving.

Yet we have gone on living, Living and partly living.

The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying Unbroken wings. And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices And the weak spirit quickens to rebel For the bent goldenrod and the lost sea smell.

What seas what shores what gray rocks and what islands What water lapping the bow And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog What images return O my daughter.

Wavering between the profit and the loss In this brief transit where the dreams cross The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying.

Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled About the center of the silent Word.

Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown, Lilac and brown hair; Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair, Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair Climbing the third stair.

The time. Redeem The unread vision in the higher dream While jeweled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

Terminate torment Of love unsatisfied The greater torment Of love satisfied.

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly But merely vans to beat the air The air which is now thoroughly small and dry Smaller and dryer than the will Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

But if you understand or if you don’t

Because I do not hope to turn again 5 Because I do not hope Because I do not hope to turn.

Two live as one One live as two Two live as three Under the bam Under the boo Under the bamboo tree.

Birth, and copulation, and death. That’s all the facts when you come to brass tacks.

This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.

Into a stew. A nice little, white little, missionary stew!

Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow.

Shape without form, shade without color, Paralyzed force, gesture without motion; Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom Remember us—if at all—not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.

These fragments I have shored against my ruins.

We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Who is the third who walks always beside you?

Dayadhvam: I have heard the key Turn in the door once and turn once only We think of the key, each in his prison Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison.

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell And the profit and loss.

Here is no water but only rock.

When lovely woman stoops to folly 4 and Paces about her room again, alone, She smooths her hair with automatic hand, And puts a record on the gramophone.

Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a taxi throbbing waiting, I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives.

Hurry up please its time.

But at my back from time to time I hear 3 The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring. O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter And on her daughter They wash their feet in soda water.

O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag— It’s so elegant So intelligent.

I think we are in rats’ alley Where the dead men lost their bones.

I had not thought death had undone so many. 1 Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled. 2

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.

The nightingales are singing near The Convent of the Sacred Heart, And sang within the bloody wood When Agamemnon cried aloud, And let their liquid siftings fall To stain the stiff dishonored shroud.

Uncorseted, her friendly bust Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.

He knew the anguish of the marrow The ague of the skeleton; No contact possible to flesh Allayed the fever of the bone.

Webster was much possessed by death And saw the skull beneath the skin.

The hippopotamus’s day Is passed in sleep; at night he hunts; God works in a mysterious way— The Church can sleep and feed at once.

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions, Guides us by vanities.

Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

Here I am, an old man in a dry month, Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.

He had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it.

Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.