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. FORSTERIt 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.
More E. M. Forster Quotes
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My 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.
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I can only do what’s easy. I can only entice and be enticed. I can’t, and won’t, attempt difficult relations. If I marry it will either be a man who’s strong enough to boss me or whom I’m strong enough to boss.
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But 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.
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Science is better than sympathy, if only it is science.
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Unless we remember we cannot understand.
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One has two duties – to be worried and not to be worried.
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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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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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You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you.
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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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It is so difficult – at least, I find it difficult – to understand people who speak the truth.
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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.
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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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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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One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.
E. M. FORSTER