But the body is deeper than the soul and its secrets inscrutable.
E. M. FORSTERThe 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.
More E. M. Forster Quotes
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It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and, close below, Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road.
E. M. FORSTER -
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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Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there?
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Unless we remember we cannot understand.
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My conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it.
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When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.
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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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Though life is very glorious, it is difficult.
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There’s never any great risk as long as you have money.
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Outside the arch, always there seemed another arch. And beyond the remotest echo, a silence.
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How can I know what I think till I see what I say?
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So I shan’t ever marry, for there aren’t such men. And Heaven help any one whom I do marry, for I shall certainly run away from him before you can say ‘Jack Robinson.
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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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At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.
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Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.
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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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Don’t be mysterious; there isn’t the time.
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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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Think before you speak is criticism’s motto; speak before you think, creation’s.
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The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.
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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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I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man’s pleasure when they come a cropper.
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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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You confuse what’s important with what’s impressive.
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Life is sometimes life and sometimes only a drama, and one must learn to distinguish t’other from which . . .
E. M. FORSTER -
Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
E. M. FORSTER