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. FORSTERInside 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.
More E. M. Forster Quotes
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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.
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 -
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.
E. M. FORSTER -
Give, do not lend; after death who will thank you?
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Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown
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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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You told me once that we shall be judged by our intentions, not by our accomplishments. I thought it a grand remark. But we must intend to accomplish – not sit intending on a chair.
E. M. FORSTER -
Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate.
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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 -
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.
E. M. FORSTER -
There’s never any great risk as long as you have money.
E. M. FORSTER -
Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.
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You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you.
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.
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Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.
E. M. FORSTER