The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.
E. M. FORSTERWe move between two darknesses.
More E. M. Forster Quotes
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Life is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.
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Don’t be mysterious; there isn’t the time.
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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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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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You told me once that we shall be judged by our intentions, not by our accomplishments. I thought it a grand remark. But we must intend to accomplish – not sit intending on a chair.
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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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Adventures do occur, but not punctually.
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The final test for a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define.
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The emotions may be endless. The more we express them, the more we may have to express.
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Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.
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To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.
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Books have to be read it is the only way of discovering what they contain.
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I won’t be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult.
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One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.
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But it struck him that people are not really dead until they are felt to be dead. As long as there is some misunderstanding about them, they possess a sort of immortality.
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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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If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
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Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.
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One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.
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One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.
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It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins and blue amorini sport in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons.
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We move between two darknesses.
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It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and, close below, Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road.
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What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?
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She had been so wicked that in all her life she had done only one good deed-given an onion to a beggar. So she went to hell. As she lay in torment she saw the onion, lowered down from heaven by an angel. She caught hold of it. He began to pull her up.
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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.
E. M. FORSTER