Human relations are impossible. When they are real they are uncomfortable, and when they are comfortable they are unreal. It was for the journey into solitude that the human soul was created.
E. M. FORSTERWe 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.
More E. M. Forster Quotes
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Life is sometimes life and sometimes only a drama, and one must learn to distinguish t’other from which . . .
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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.
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The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected.
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The emotions may be endless. The more we express them, the more we may have to express.
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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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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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We move between two darknesses.
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One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.
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Though life is very glorious, it is difficult.
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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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Don’t be mysterious; there isn’t the time.
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My temple stands not upon Mount Moriah but in the Elysian Field where even the immoral are admitted. My motto is ‘Lord, I disbelieve – help thou my unbelief.
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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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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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Books have to be read it is the only way of discovering what they contain.
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Life is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.
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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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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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The historian records, but the novelist creates.
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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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For it is a serious thing to have been watched. We all radiate something curiously intimate when we believe ourselves to be alone.
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Outside the arch, always there seemed another arch. And beyond the remotest echo, a silence.
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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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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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It’s not what people do to you, but what they mean, that hurts.
E. M. FORSTER