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.
E. M. FORSTERAt night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.
More E. M. Forster Quotes
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Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate.
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Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
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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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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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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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Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown
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Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work.
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Science is better than sympathy, if only it is science.
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Have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet at the same time – beautiful?
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There is an aristocracy of the sensitive. They represent the true human tradition of permanent victory over cruelty and chaos.
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I think you’re beautiful, the only beautiful person I’ve ever seen. I love your voice and everything to do with you, down to your clothes or the room you are sitting in. I adore you.
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We move between two darknesses.
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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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Money pads the edges of things.
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There are moments when the inner life actually ‘pays,’ when years of self-scrutiny, conducted for no ulterior motive, are suddenly of practical use.
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Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.
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The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.
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I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I’d like to be.
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… there are shadows because there are hills.
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It isn’t possible to love and to part.
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Unless we remember we cannot understand.
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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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One has two duties – to be worried and not to be worried.
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Adventures do occur, but not punctually.
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Think before you speak is criticism’s motto; speak before you think, creation’s.
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It’s not what people do to you, but what they mean, that hurts.
E. M. FORSTER