Jonny B > Jonny B's Quotes

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
― Harry Crosby, Transit of Venus

“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.”
― T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“The very existence of libraries affords the best evidence that we may yet have hope for the future of man”
― T.S. Eliot

“Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”
― T.S. Eliot

“What is hell? Hell is oneself.
Hell is alone, the other figures in it
Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from
And nothing to escape to. One is always alone.”
― T.S. Eliot

“If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?”
― T.S. Eliot

“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”
― T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“Unreal friendship may turn to real
But real friendship, once ended, cannot be mended”
― T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral

“Books. Cats. Life is good.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood

“The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous.
Resign yourself to be the fool you are...
...We must always take risks. That is our destiny...”
― T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party

“I learn a great deal by merely observing you, and letting you talk as long as you please, and taking note of what you do not say.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Success is relative. It is what we make of the mess we have made of things.”
― T.S. Eliot

“I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.”
― T.S. Eliot

“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?”
― T.S. Eliot

“We do not pass through the same door twice
Or return to the door through which we did not pass”
― T.S. Eliot

“We had the experience but missed the meaning. And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
-But who is that on the other side of you?”
― T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land and Other Poems

“I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems

“Humor is also a way of saying something serious.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood

“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.

—T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets (Gardners Books; Main edition, April 30, 2001) Originally published 1943.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“For you know only a heap of broken images”
― T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land