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.
E. M. FORSTERI 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.
More E. M. Forster Quotes
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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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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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… there are shadows because there are hills.
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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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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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Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.
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How can I know what I think till I see what I say?
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Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.
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Give, do not lend; after death who will thank you?
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It is so difficult – at least, I find it difficult – to understand people who speak the truth.
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The other damned saw what was happening and caught hold of it too. She was indignant and cried, “Let go-it’s my onion,” and as soon as she said, “my onion,” the stalk broke and she fell back into the flames.
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I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I’d like to be.
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Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate.
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Adventures do occur, but not punctually.
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It isn’t possible to love and to part.
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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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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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Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work.
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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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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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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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Books have to be read it is the only way of discovering what they contain.
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One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.
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Nonsense and beauty have close connections.
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The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul.
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What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?
E. M. FORSTER