They know and do not know, what it is to act or suffer. They know and do not know, that acting is suffering.

The lines turn on a paradox central to Eliot’s religious and philosophical imagination: human beings often live in a state of partial awareness, simultaneously “knowing and not knowing” the true nature of experience. The pairing of “act or suffer” suggests the usual opposition between agency and passivity, but the final claim—“acting is suffering”—collapses that distinction. To choose, to will, and to intervene in the world entails exposure to consequence, guilt, limitation, and loss; action binds the self to time and to others. The repetition and balanced clauses mimic a mind circling a difficult truth, emphasizing how insight can be intellectually grasped yet existentially resisted.