T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

"A condition of complete simplicity(Costing not less than everything)"

"We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, remembered gate When the last of earth left to discover Is that which was the beginning;At the source of the longest river The voice of the hidden waterfall And the children in the apple-tree Not known, because not looked for But heard, half-heard, in the stillness Between two waves of the sea. Quick now, here, now, always—A condition of complete simplicity(Costing not less than everything)And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flames are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one."

"The dove descending breaks the air With flame of incandescent terror Of which the tongues declare The one discharge from sin and error. The only hope, or else despair Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-To be redeemed from fire by fire. Who then devised the torment? Love. Love is the unfamiliar Name Behind the hands that wove The intolerable shirt of flame Which human power cannot remove. We only live, only suspire Consumed by either fire or fire."

"What the dead had no speech for, when living,They can tell you, being dead: the communication Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living."

"There are three conditions which often look alike Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference, ... ."

"What was to be the value of the long looked forward to,Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenity And the wisdom of age? Had they deceived us Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?The serenity only a deliberate hebetude,The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secrets Useless in the darkness into which they peered Or from which they turned their eyes. There is, it seems to us,At best, only a limited value In the knowledge derived from experience. 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. We are only undeceived Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm."

"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. What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present."

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

"Footfalls echo in the memorydown the passage we did not taketowards the door we never openedinto the rose garden. My words echothus, in your mind"

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

"Humankind cannot bear very much reality."

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

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

"We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time."

"In my end is my beginning."