If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
E. M. FORSTERBut 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.
More E. M. Forster Quotes
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Unless we remember we cannot understand.
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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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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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It’s not what people do to you, but what they mean, that hurts.
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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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Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.
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I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals.
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It makes a difference doesn’t it, whether we fully fence ourselves in, or whether we are fenced out by the barriers of others?
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Don’t be mysterious; there isn’t the time.
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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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One of the evils of money is that it tempts us to look at it rather than at the things that it buys.
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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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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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I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.
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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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We move between two darknesses.
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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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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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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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We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
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We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand.
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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 would rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave.
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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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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.
E. M. FORSTER