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.
E. M. FORSTERShe 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.
More E. M. Forster Quotes
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It is so difficult – at least, I find it difficult – to understand people who speak the truth.
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Nonsense and beauty have close connections.
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Unless we remember we cannot understand.
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Books have to be read it is the only way of discovering what they contain.
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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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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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What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?
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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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The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.
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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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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.
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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.
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My conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it.
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You confuse what’s important with what’s impressive.
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At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.
E. M. FORSTER






