Waste Land Quotes

• 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

  Inspirational, Funny, Life

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

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• He who was living is now dead We who were living are now dying With a little patience.

  T. S. Eliot

  Patience, Dying, Littles

  1922 The Waste Land, pt.5,'What the Thunder Said'.

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• 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.

  T. S. Eliot

  Morning, Fear, Rocks

  The Waste Land l. 25 (1922)

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• In the mountains, there you feel free.

  T. S. Eliot

  Mountain, Feels

  The Waste Land l. 17 (1922)

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

  T. S. Eliot

  Men, Thinking, Rats

  Waste Land (1922) pt. 2

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• These fragments I have shored against my ruins

  T. S. Eliot

  Age, Ruins, Nostalgia

  The Waste Land l. 431 (1922)

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• 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

  T. S. Eliot

  Morning, Fear, Dust

  The Waste Land l. 25 (1922)

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• I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

  T. S. Eliot

  Inspirational, Fear, Dust

  The Waste Land l. 25 (1922)

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• We had been hopelessly labouring to plough waste lands; to make nationality grow in a place full of the certainty of God… Among the tribes our creed could be only like the desert grass – a beautiful swift seeming of spring; which, after a day’s heat, fell dusty.

  T. E. Lawrence

  Beautiful, Spring, Military

  T. E. Lawrence (2013). “Seven Pillars of Wisdom”, p.338, Black House Publishing Ltd

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• A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many.

  T. S. Eliot

  Bridges, Crowds, London

  The Waste Land l. 60 (1922).

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• For you know only a heap of broken images

  T. S. Eliot

  Broken, Broken Images, Knows

  The Waste Land l. 21 (1922)

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• April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.

  T. S. Eliot

  Memories, Spring, Rain

  The Waste Land l. 1 (1922)

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• The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started.

  T. S. Eliot

  Travel, Adventure, Science

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

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• I can connect Nothing with nothing

  T. S. Eliot

  Wasteland, I Can

  T.S. Eliot (2015). “The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume II: Practical Cats and Further Verses”, p.398, Faber & Faber

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• 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

  Men, White, Together

  Waste Land (1922) pt. 5

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• Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison.

  T. S. Eliot

  Thinking, Keys, Prison

  The Waste Land l. 412 (1922)

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• I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

  T. S. Eliot

  Reading, Winter, Night

  The Waste Land l. 17 (1922)

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• What have we given? My friend, blood shaking my heart The awful daring of a moment's surrender Which an age of prudence can never retract By this, and this only, we have existed.

  T. S. Eliot

  Heart, Blood, Age

  The Waste Land l. 404 (1922)

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• Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow

  T. S. Eliot

  Winter, Snow, Covering

  The Waste Land l. 5 (1922)

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• In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing

  T. S. Eliot

  Singing, Moonlight, Grass

  1922 The Waste Land, pt.5,'What the Thunder Said'.

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• Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

  T. S. Eliot

  Communication, Writing, Poetry

  1929 Dante.

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• My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me. 'Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak. 'What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? 'I never know what you are thinking. Think.

  T. S. Eliot

  Night, Thinking, Nerves

  T.S. Eliot (2011). “The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot”, p.56, Faber & Faber

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• Dayodhuam: 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.

  T. S. Eliot

  Thinking, Keys, Doors

  The Waste Land l. 412 (1922)

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• You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; They called me the hyacinth girl.' —Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence. Od' und leer das Meer.

  T. S. Eliot

  Girl, Heart, Eye

  T.S. Eliot “My Own Wasteland”, Lisa Lee

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• I tried to explain to her the significance of the great poet, but without much success, The Waste Land not figuring very largely in Mam's scheme of things. "The thing is," I said finally, "he won the Nobel Prize." "Well," she said, with that unerring grasp of inessentials which is the prerogative of mothers, "I'm not surprised. It was a beautiful overcoat."

  Alan Bennett

  Beautiful, Mother, Land

  "Writing Home". Book by Alan Bennett, 1994.

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