There are moments when the inner life actually ‘pays,’ when years of self-scrutiny, conducted for no ulterior motive, are suddenly of practical use.
E. M. FORSTERDeath destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.
More E. M. Forster Quotes
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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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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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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.
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When I think of what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love; it is one of the moments for which the world was made.
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It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins and blue amorini sport in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons.
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Though life is very glorious, it is difficult.
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Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown
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Science is better than sympathy, if only it is science.
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It’s not what people do to you, but what they mean, that hurts.
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To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.
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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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There is an aristocracy of the sensitive. They represent the true human tradition of permanent victory over cruelty and chaos.
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Give, do not lend; after death who will thank you?
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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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The historian records, but the novelist creates.
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We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand.
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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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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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It isn’t possible to love and to part.
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Books have to be read it is the only way of discovering what they contain.
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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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You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you.
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School was the unhappiest time of my life and the worst trick it ever played on me was to pretend that it was the world in miniature. For it hindered me from discovering how lovely and delightful and kind the world can be, and how much of it is intelligible.
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How can I know what I think till I see what I say?
E. M. FORSTER