T.S. Eliot

The fool,fixed in his folly,may think
He can turn the wheel on which he turns.

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

This is how the world ends: not with a bang but a whimper.

And the wind shall say "Here were decent godless people;
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls."

For last year's words belong to last year's language.
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.

I said to my soul, be still
And let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God

In order to arrive there,
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.

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 and the hope 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.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive at what we started
And know the place for the first time