T. S. Eliot Giving Quotations

You must not on any account give me credit for being penetrating. I have impressed people that way before, and the result is always disaster.

A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel reader is not prepared to give.

But what have I, but what have I, my friend, To give you, what can you receive from me? Only the friendship and the sympathy Of one about to reach her journey's end.

You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends, And how, how rare and strange it is, to find In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends, (For indeed I do not love it ... you knew? you are not blind! How keen you are!) To find a friend who has these qualities, Who has, and gives Those qualities upon which friendship lives. How much it means that I say this to you- Without these friendships-life, what cauchemar!

Uncorseted, her friendly bust Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.

Those who say they give the public what it wants begin by underestimating public taste and end by debauching it.

When we read of human beings behaving in certain ways, with the approval of the author, who gives his benediction to this behavior by his attitude towards the result of the behavior arranged by himself, we can be influenced towards behaving in the same way.