“We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.”

“And the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time”

“We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.Through the unknown, remembered gateWhen the last of earth left to discoverIs that which was the beginning;At the source of the longest riverThe voice of the hidden waterfallAnd the children in the apple-treeNot known, because not looked forBut heard, half-heard, in the stillnessBetween two waves of the sea.—T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets (Gardners Books; Main edition, April 30, 2001) Originally published 1943.”

“We must not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.”

“The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we know we started and know the place for the first time.”

“Home is where one starts from. As we grow olderThe world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicatedOf dead and living. Not the intense momentIsolated, with no before and after,But a lifetime burning in every momentAnd not the lifetime of one man onlyBut of old stones that cannot be deciphered.There is a time for the evening under starlight,A time for the evening under lamplight(The evening with the photograph album).Love is most nearly itselfWhen here and now cease to matter.Old men ought to be explorersHere or there does not matterWe must be still and still movingInto another intensityFor a further union, a deeper communionThrough the dark cold and the empty desolation,The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast watersOf the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.”

“If we all were judged according to the consequencesOf all our words and deeds, beyond the intentionAnd beyond our limited understandingOf ourselves and others, we should all be condemned.”