Quartets Quotes - Page 2

• There is no bad day that can’t be overcome by listening to a barbershop quartet. This is just truth, plain and simple.

  Aldous Huxley

  Bad Day, Simple, Listening

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• Trying to use words, and every attempt Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure Because one has only learnt to get the better of words For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling.

  T. S. Eliot

  New Beginnings, Feelings, Trying

  East Coker (1940) pt. 5

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• And the end and the beginning were always there Before the beginning and after the end.

  T. S. Eliot

  Ends

  "The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot".

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• time past and time future what might have been and what has been point to one end, which is always present.

  T. S. Eliot

  Time, Past, Might

  T.S. Eliot (2015). “The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I: Collected and Uncollected Poems”, p.904, Faber & Faber

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• To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not / You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.

  T. S. Eliot

  Struggle, Way, Where You Are

  Four Quartets "East Coker" pt. 3 (1940)

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• Desire itself is movement
  Not in itself desirable;
  Love is itself unmoving,
  Only the cause and end of movement,
  Timeless, and undesiring
  Except in the aspect of time
  Caught in the form of limitation
  Between un-being and being.

  T. S. Eliot

  Life, Love Is, Desire

  T.S. Eliot (2009). “Collected Poems 1909-1962”, p.161, Faber & Faber

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• The only hope, or else despair
  Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre -
  To be redeemed from fire by fire.

  T. S. Eliot

  Hope, Lying, Fire

  T. S. Eliot (2014). “Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950”, p.153, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not all it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

  T. S. Eliot

  Past, Silence, Would Be

  Collected Poems (1936) "Burnt Norton" pt. 2

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• There is, it seems to us, At best, only a limited value In the knowledge derived from experience.

  T. S. Eliot

  Experience, Seems, Values

  1940 Four Quartets,'East Coker', pt.2.

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• The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is incarnation. Here the impossible union of spheres of existence is actual. Here the past and future are conquered and reconciled.

  T. S. Eliot

  Past, Hints, Half

  1941 Four Quartets,'The Dry Salvages', pt.5.

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• The past and future / Are conquered, and reconciled.

  T. S. Eliot

  Past

  T. S. Eliot (2014). “Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950”, p.145, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Not less of love, but expanding Of love beyond desire, and so liberation From the Future as well as the past.

  T. S. Eliot

  Love, Past, Desire

  1942 Four Quartets,'Little Gidding', pt.3.

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• For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

  T. S. Eliot

  Work, Poetry, Trying

  Four Quartets "East Coker" pt. 5 (1940)

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• Love is the unfamiliar Name
  Behind the hands that wove
  The intolerable shirt of flame
  Which human power cannot remove.

  T. S. Eliot

  Life, Love Is, Flames

  Four Quartets "Little Gidding" pt. 4 (1942)

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• Words move, music moves Only in time; but that which is only living Can only die. Words, after speech, reach Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern, Can words or music reach The stillness.

  T. S. Eliot

  Moving, Silence, Speech

  T.S. Eliot (2011). “The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot”, p.157, Faber & Faber

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• Each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling.

  T. S. Eliot

  New Beginnings, Feelings, Venture

  Four Quartets "East Coker" pt. 5 (1940)

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• To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not, You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy. In order to arrive at what you do not know You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance. In order to possess what you do not possess You must go by the way of dispossession. In order to arrive at what you are not You must go through the way in which you are not. And what you do not know is the only thing you know And what you own is what you do not own And where you are is where you are not.

  T. S. Eliot

  Ignorance, Order, Way

  Four Quartets "East Coker" pt. 3 (1940)

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• A people without history
  Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
  Of timeless moments.

  T. S. Eliot

  Time, People, Patterns

  Little Gidding (1942) pt. 5

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• Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden.

  T. S. Eliot

  Love, Memories, Garden

  Four Quartets "Burnt Norton" pt. 1 (1936)

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• What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.

  T. S. Eliot

  Death, Dance, Recovery

  Four Quartets "Little Gidding" pt. 5 (1942)

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• 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 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.

  T. S. Eliot

  Love, Hope, Light

  1940 Four Quartets,'East Coker', pt.1.

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• One is that you have to take time, lots of time, to let an idea grow from within. The second is that when you sign on to something, there will be issues of trust, deep trust, the way the members of a string quartet have to trust one another.

  Yo-Yo Ma

  Ideas, Issues, Way

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• 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.

  T. S. Eliot

  Love, Meditation, Waiting

  T.S. Eliot (2011). “The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot”, p.162, Faber & Faber

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• There was one thing Beethoven didn't do. When one of his string quartets was played, you can believe the second violin wasn't improvising.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Believe, Second Chance, Violin

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• You are the music while the music lasts.

  T. S. Eliot

  Music, Dope, Jazz And Life

  Four Quartets "The Dry Salvages" pt. 5 (1941)

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