You confuse what’s important with what’s impressive.
E. M. FORSTERMoney pads the edges of things.
More E. M. Forster Quotes
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The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then queen died of grief is a plot.
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One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.
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But the body is deeper than the soul and its secrets inscrutable.
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The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul.
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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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The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected.
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Give, do not lend; after death who will thank you?
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I would rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave.
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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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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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The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world.
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Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.
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Think before you speak is criticism’s motto; speak before you think, creation’s.
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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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Adventures do occur, but not punctually.
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We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand.
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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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The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.
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Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend.
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Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate.
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Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown
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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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Nonsense and beauty have close connections.
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Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talks that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence.
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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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School was the unhappiest time of my life and the worst trick it ever played on me was to pretend that it was the world in miniature. For it hindered me from discovering how lovely and delightful and kind the world can be, and how much of it is intelligible.
E. M. FORSTER