Quartets Quotes

• I'll tell you what I would do in a shot if I could. I would sing in the barbershop quartet in The Music Man.

  Ned Beatty

  Men, Barbershop, Shots

  69 Copy quote

• For most of us, there is only the unattended
  Moment, the moment in and out of time,
  The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
  The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
  Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
  That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
  While the music lasts

  T. S. Eliot

  Winter, Waterfalls, Lasts

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

  120 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  T. S. Eliot

  Simplicity, Conditions

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

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  T. S. Eliot

  Inspirational, New Year, New Beginnings

  T. S. Eliot (2014). “Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950”, p.150, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  32 Copy quote

  Show source

• Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter.

  T. S. Eliot

  Love, Life, Romantic

  1940 Four Quartets,'East Coker', pt.5.

  39 Copy quote

  Show source

• We had the experience but missed the meaning. And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form.

  T. S. Eliot

  Experience, Different, Form

  1941 Four Quartets,'The Dry Salvages', pt.2.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• In order to possess what you do not possess, you must go by the way of dispossession.

  T. S. Eliot

  Order, Way

  T. S. Eliot (2014). “Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950”, p.136, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• And all shall be well and/ All manner of thing shall be well/ By the purification of the motive/ In the ground of our beseeching

  T. S. Eliot

  Purification, Motive, Wells

  T. S. Eliot (2014). “Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950”, p.152, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• History may be servitude. History may be freedom. See, now they vanish. The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them, to become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.

  T. S. Eliot

  Self, May, Patterns

  T.S. Eliot (2009). “Collected Poems 1909-1962”, p.180, Faber & Faber

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Time past and time future allow but a little consciousness. To be conscious is not to be in time.

  T. S. Eliot

  Past, Littles, Consciousness

  1935 Four Quartets,'Burnt Norton', pt.2.

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.

  T. S. Eliot

  Hints, Half, Incarnation

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

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is.

  T. S. Eliot

  Dance, World, Flesh

  Four Quartets "Burnt Norton" pt. 2 (1936)

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Do not let me hear
  Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
  Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
  Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
  The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
  Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.

  T. S. Eliot

  Humility, Men, Endless

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

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• In order to arrive at what you are not, you must go through the way in which you are not.

  T. S. Eliot

  Order, Way

  T.S. Eliot (2016). “Cuatro cuartetos: Precedido por La roca y Asesinato en la Catedral”, p.96, LUMEN

  43 Copy quote

  Show source

• Cold Mountain Buddhas Han Shan Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness be dancing. Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning. The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry, The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony Of death and birth.

  T. S. Eliot

  Death, Running, Laughter

  12 Copy quote

• I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river Is a strong brown god-sullen, untamed and intractable.

  T. S. Eliot

  Strong, Thinking, Rivers

  Four Quartets "The Dry Salvages" pt. 1 (1941)

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Time present and time past / are both perhaps present in time future.

  T. S. Eliot

  Past, Times Past

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

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• A good quartet is like a good conversation among friends interacting to each other's ideas.

  Stan Getz

  Music, Ideas, Jazz

  52 Copy quote

• Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, every poem an epitaph.

  T. S. Eliot

  Phrases, Ends, Epitaph

  T.S. Eliot (2015). “The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I: Collected and Uncollected Poems”, p.208, Faber & Faber

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The most perfect expression of human behavior is a string quartet.

  Jeffrey Tate

  Music, Expression, Perfect

  20 Copy quote

• I owe very, very much to Mozart; and if one studies, for instance, the way in which I write for string quartet, then one cannot deny that I have learned this directly from Mozart. And I am proud of it!

  Arnold Schoenberg

  Writing, Proud, Way

  Arnold Schoenberg, Christian Meyer, Therese Muxeneder, Arnold Schönberg Center (2005). “Arnold Schönberg: catalogue raisonné”

  45 Copy quote

  Show source

• I suppose subconsciously I was thinking in terms of having the scale of it matching the scale of the images. Hence the sort of string quartet, jazz band and electronic stuff.

  Jonny Greenwood

  Thinking, Band, Stuff

  73 Copy quote

• At the still point, there the dance is.

  T. S. Eliot

  Beautiful, Dance, Scene

  'Four Quartets' 'Burnt Norton' (1936) pt. 2

  34 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.

  Julian of Norwich

  Faith, Purification, Wells

  Revelations of Divine Love ch. 27 (ca. 1380)

  252 Copy quote

  Show source

• Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance

  T. S. Eliot

  Inspirational, Life, Dancing

  T.S. Eliot (2015). “The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I: Collected and Uncollected Poems”, p.181, Faber & Faber

  7 Copy quote

  Show source