She had been so wicked that in all her life she had done only one good deed-given an onion to a beggar. So she went to hell. As she lay in torment she saw the onion, lowered down from heaven by an angel. She caught hold of it. He began to pull her up.
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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Life is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.
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Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them.
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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 people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.
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We move between two darknesses.
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There are moments when the inner life actually ‘pays,’ when years of self-scrutiny, conducted for no ulterior motive, are suddenly of practical use.
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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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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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There is an aristocracy of the sensitive. They represent the true human tradition of permanent victory over cruelty and chaos.
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Aziz winked at him slowly and said: “…There are many ways of being a man; mine is to express what is deepest in my heart.
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Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.
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She stopped and leant her elbows against the parapet of the embankment. He did likewise. There is at times a magic in identity of position; it is one of the things that have suggested to us eternal comradeship.
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Money pads the edges of things.
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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.
E. M. FORSTER