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. FORSTERNonsense and beauty have close connections.
More E. M. Forster Quotes
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Sometimes I think too much fuss is made about marriage. Century after century of carnal embracement and we’re still no nearer to understanding one another.
E. M. FORSTER -
One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.
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Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.
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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.
E. M. FORSTER -
Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch, which ought to be applied as sparingly as possible. I dislike the stuff. I do not believe in it, for its own sake, at all… My lawgivers are Erasmus and Montaigne, not Moses and St Paul.
E. M. FORSTER -
Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don’t believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art’s sake.
E. M. FORSTER -
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. FORSTER -
But the body is deeper than the soul and its secrets inscrutable.
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I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals.
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Don’t be mysterious; there isn’t the time.
E. M. FORSTER -
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.
E. M. FORSTER -
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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Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown
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I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.
E. M. FORSTER






