One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.
E. M. FORSTERHuman 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.
More E. M. Forster Quotes
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Aziz winked at him slowly and said: “…There are many ways of being a man; mine is to express what is deepest in my heart.
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Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate.
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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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For it is a serious thing to have been watched. We all radiate something curiously intimate when we believe ourselves to be alone.
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Don’t be mysterious; there isn’t the time.
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Do not be proud of your inconsistency. It is a pity, it is a pity that we should be equipped like this. It is a pity that Man cannot be at the same time impressive and truthful.
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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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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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Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.
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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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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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I have no mystic faith in the people. I have in the individual.
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I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.
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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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I won’t be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult.
E. M. FORSTER