If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
E. M. FORSTERYou confuse what’s important with what’s impressive.
More E. M. Forster Quotes
-
-
At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.
E. M. FORSTER -
One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.
E. M. FORSTER -
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.
E. M. FORSTER -
Adventures do occur, but not punctually.
E. M. FORSTER -
Think before you speak is criticism’s motto; speak before you think, creation’s.
E. M. FORSTER -
I think you’re beautiful, the only beautiful person I’ve ever seen. I love your voice and everything to do with you, down to your clothes or the room you are sitting in. I adore you.
E. M. FORSTER -
We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
E. M. FORSTER -
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. FORSTER -
It isn’t possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.
E. M. FORSTER -
When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.
E. M. FORSTER -
I won’t be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult.
E. M. FORSTER -
… there are shadows because there are hills.
E. M. FORSTER -
One grows accustomed to being praised, or being blamed, or being advised, but it is unusual to be understood.
E. M. FORSTER -
There is an aristocracy of the sensitive. They represent the true human tradition of permanent victory over cruelty and chaos.
E. M. FORSTER -
It makes a difference doesn’t it, whether we fully fence ourselves in, or whether we are fenced out by the barriers of others?
E. M. FORSTER