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.
E. M. FORSTERBut 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.
More E. M. Forster Quotes
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If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
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But the body is deeper than the soul and its secrets inscrutable.
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One grows accustomed to being praised, or being blamed, or being advised, but it is unusual to be understood.
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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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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.
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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?
E. M. FORSTER -
When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.
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I believe we shall come to care about people less and less, Helen. The more people one knows, the easier it becomes to replace them. It’s one of the curses of London. I quite expect to end my life caring most for a place.
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Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown
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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.
E. M. FORSTER -
The sort of poetry I seek only resides in objects Man can’t touch – like England ‘s grass network of lanes 100 years ago, but today he can destroy them and only Lord Farrer keeps him from doing it.
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We move between two darknesses.
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One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.
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We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand.
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There is an aristocracy of the sensitive. They represent the true human tradition of permanent victory over cruelty and chaos.
E. M. FORSTER