Think before you speak is criticism’s motto; speak before you think, creation’s.
E. M. FORSTERMy temple stands not upon Mount Moriah but in the Elysian Field where even the immoral are admitted. My motto is ‘Lord, I disbelieve – help thou my unbelief.
More E. M. Forster Quotes
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Human relations are impossible. When they are real they are uncomfortable, and when they are comfortable they are unreal. It was for the journey into solitude that the human soul was created.
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Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work.
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Money pads the edges of things.
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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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How can I know what I think till I see what I say?
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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.
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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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Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate.
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It’s not what people do to you, but what they mean, that hurts.
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It isn’t possible to love and to part.
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The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.
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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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I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.
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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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Though life is very glorious, it is difficult.
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Don’t begin with proportion. Only prigs do that. Let proportion come in as a last resource, when the better things have failed.
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The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world.
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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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The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.
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Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.
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There’s never any great risk as long as you have money.
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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.
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I cannot help thinking that there is something to admire in everyone, even if you do not approve of them.
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How can I know what I think till I see what I say?
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We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
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But it struck him that people are not really dead until they are felt to be dead. As long as there is some misunderstanding about them, they possess a sort of immortality.
E. M. FORSTER