She stopped and leant her elbows against the parapet of the embankment. He did likewise. There is at times a magic in identity of position; it is one of the things that have suggested to us eternal comradeship.
E. M. FORSTERGive, do not lend; after death who will thank you?
More E. M. Forster Quotes
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Science is better than sympathy, if only it is science.
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A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.
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We move between two darknesses.
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Outside the arch, always there seemed another arch. And beyond the remotest echo, a silence.
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My temple stands not upon Mount Moriah but in the Elysian Field where even the immoral are admitted. My motto is ‘Lord, I disbelieve – help thou my unbelief.
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I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals.
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So I shan’t ever marry, for there aren’t such men. And Heaven help any one whom I do marry, for I shall certainly run away from him before you can say ‘Jack Robinson.
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You confuse what’s important with what’s impressive.
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How can I know what I think till I see what I say?
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The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.
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We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won’t do harm – yes, choose a place where you won’t do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.
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Money pads the edges of things.
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Human relations are impossible. When they are real they are uncomfortable, and when they are comfortable they are unreal. It was for the journey into solitude that the human soul was created.
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Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch, which ought to be applied as sparingly as possible. I dislike the stuff. I do not believe in it, for its own sake, at all… My lawgivers are Erasmus and Montaigne, not Moses and St Paul.
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When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.
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It is easy to sympathize at a distance,’ said an old gentleman with a beard. ‘I value more the kind word that is spoken close to my ear.
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Don’t begin with proportion. Only prigs do that. Let proportion come in as a last resource, when the better things have failed.
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If we act the truth the people who really love us are sure to come back to us in the long run
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Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them.
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I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man’s pleasure when they come a cropper.
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I would rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave.
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I can only do what’s easy. I can only entice and be enticed. I can’t, and won’t, attempt difficult relations. If I marry it will either be a man who’s strong enough to boss me or whom I’m strong enough to boss.
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Life is sometimes life and sometimes only a drama, and one must learn to distinguish t’other from which . . .
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My conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it.
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But Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.
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Adventures do occur, but not punctually.
E. M. FORSTER