We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won’t do harm – yes, choose a place where you won’t do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.
E. M. FORSTEROne grows accustomed to being praised, or being blamed, or being advised, but it is unusual to be understood.
More E. M. Forster Quotes
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… there are shadows because there are hills.
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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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Books have to be read it is the only way of discovering what they contain.
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One has two duties – to be worried and not to be worried.
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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.
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You confuse what’s important with what’s impressive.
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What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.
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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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I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.
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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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Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talks that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence.
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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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I would rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave.
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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 isn’t possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.
E. M. FORSTER