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. FORSTERSpoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
More E. M. Forster Quotes
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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.
E. M. FORSTER -
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.
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There’s never any great risk as long as you have money.
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It’s not what people do to you, but what they mean, that hurts.
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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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Don’t be mysterious; there isn’t the time.
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Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate.
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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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People have their own deaths as well as their own lives, and even if there is nothing beyond death, we shall differ in our nothingness.
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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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But it struck him that people are not really dead until they are felt to be dead. As long as there is some misunderstanding about them, they possess a sort of immortality.
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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.
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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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I think you’re beautiful, the only beautiful person I’ve ever seen. I love your voice and everything to do with you, down to your clothes or the room you are sitting in. I adore you.
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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.
E. M. FORSTER