We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand.
E. M. FORSTERScience is better than sympathy, if only it is science.
More E. M. Forster Quotes
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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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Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.
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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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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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I would rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave.
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The sort of poetry I seek only resides in objects Man can’t touch – like England ‘s grass network of lanes 100 years ago, but today he can destroy them and only Lord Farrer keeps him from doing it.
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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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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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One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.
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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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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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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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I won’t be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult.
E. M. FORSTER -
My conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it.
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Science is better than sympathy, if only it is science.
E. M. FORSTER -
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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You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you.
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Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.
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Sometimes I think too much fuss is made about marriage. Century after century of carnal embracement and we’re still no nearer to understanding one another.
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Adventures do occur, but not punctually.
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It isn’t possible to love and to part.
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Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate.
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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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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 cannot help thinking that there is something to admire in everyone, even if you do not approve of them.
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When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.
E. M. FORSTER