September 26
2003
- We have a firm commitment to NATO; we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe; we are a part of Europe. ~ Dan Quayle
- selected by Nanobug
2004
- We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another. ~ Jonathan Swift
- selected by Kalki
2005
- 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 (born 26 September 1888)- proposed by Kalki
2006
- What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.
~ T. S. Eliot in The Four Quartets- proposed by Kalki
2007
- Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
~ T. S. Eliot in The Four Quartets ~- proposed by Kalki
2008
- All is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Will not stay still.
~ T. S. Eliot in The Four Quartets ~- proposed by Kalki
2009
- Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us — a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
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 in The Four Quartets ~- proposed by Kalki
2010
Suggestions
All that I can hope to make you understand is only events: not what has happened. And people to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events. ~ T. S. Eliot (date of birth)- 3 Kalki 22:46, 23 September 2005 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
- 2 InvisibleSun 21:04, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
- 1 Zarbon 23:27, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
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Yet if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following the ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its successes, "tradition" should positively be discouraged. We have seen many such simple currents soon lost in the sand; and novelty is better than repetition. Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. ~ T. S. Eliot
- 3 InvisibleSun 21:04, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 06:11, 25 September 2007 (UTC) but might eventually give it a 3 if truncated to remove the initial "Yet".
- 2 Zarbon 23:27, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
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If you don't have a hammer, you don't want anything to look like a nail. ~ Robert Kagan
- 4 Zarbon 04:39, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
- 3 InvisibleSun 22:45, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
- 1 Kalki 00:19, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
----
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 call 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 in The Four Quartets
- 3 Ningauble 00:30, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
- 3 Kalki 22:07, 25 September 2009 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4, but would probably prefer to add to the end:
- I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
----
If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; And if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; For you will heap burning coals on his head. ~ Proverbs 25:21,22
- 3 Tab1of2 21:54, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
- 2 Kalki 22:07, 25 September 2009 (UTC) but this has no clear relation to the date.
----
Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.
~ T. S. Eliot in The Four Quartets ~
- 3 Kalki 22:07, 25 September 2009 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
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Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
~ T. S. Eliot ~
- 3 Kalki 22:07, 25 September 2009 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
----
Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
~ T. S. Eliot ~
- 3 Kalki 22:07, 25 September 2009 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
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We must always take risks. That is our destiny.
~ T. S. Eliot ~
- 3 Kalki 22:07, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
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If we all were judged according to the consequences
Of all our words and deeds, beyond the intention
And beyond our limited understanding
Of ourselves and others, we should all be condemned.
~ T. S. Eliot ~
- 3 Kalki 22:07, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
----
We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet's difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate predecessors; we endeavour to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed. Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously. And I do not mean the impressionable period of adolescence, but the period of full maturity.
~ T. S. Eliot ~
- 3 Kalki 22:07, 25 September 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
----
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.
O my people, what have I done unto thee.
Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
~ T. S. Eliot ~
- 3 Kalki 22:07, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
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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 in The Four Quartets ~
- 3 Kalki 22:07, 25 September 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
----
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 in The Four Quartets ~
- 3 Kalki 22:07, 25 September 2009 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
----
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholy 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.
~ T. S. Eliot in The Four Quartets ~
- 3 Kalki 22:07, 25 September 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
----
What there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate — but there is no competition —
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
~ T. S. Eliot in The Four Quartets ~
- 3 Kalki 22:07, 25 September 2009 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
----
Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging;
You are not those who saw the harbour
Receding, or those who will disembark.
Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.
~ T. S. Eliot in The Four Quartets ~
- 3 Kalki 22:07, 25 September 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
----
Right action is freedom
From past and future also.
For most of us, this is the aim
Never here to be realised;
Who are only undefeated
Because we have gone on trying;
We, content at the last
If our temporal reversion nourish
(Not too far from the yew-tree)
The life of significant soil.
~ T. S. Eliot in The Four Quartets ~
- 3 Kalki 22:07, 25 September 2009 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
----
What the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
~ T. S. Eliot in The Four Quartets ~
- 3 Kalki 22:07, 25 September 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
----
Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.
First, the cold fricton of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
As body and soul begin to fall asunder.
Second, the conscious impotence of rage
At human folly, and the laceration
Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
Of things ill done and done to others' harm
Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains.
From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit
Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire
Where you must move in measure, like a dancer.
~ T. S. Eliot in The Four Quartets ~
- 3 Kalki 22:07, 25 September 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
----
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments.
~ T. S. Eliot in The Four Quartets ~
- 3 Kalki 22:07, 25 September 2009 (UTC) with a lean toward 4.
----
Quick now, here, now, always —
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
~ T. S. Eliot in The Four Quartets ~
- 3 Kalki 22:07, 25 September 2009 (UTC) with a very strong lean toward 4.
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