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. FORSTERFaith, 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.
More E. M. Forster Quotes
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Life is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.
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There are periods in the most thrilling day during which nothing happens, and though we continue to exclaim, “I do enjoy myself”, or , “I am horrified,” we are insincere.
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So I shan’t ever marry, for there aren’t such men. And Heaven help any one whom I do marry, for I shall certainly run away from him before you can say ‘Jack Robinson.
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It makes a difference doesn’t it, whether we fully fence ourselves in, or whether we are fenced out by the barriers of others?
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We move between two darknesses.
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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.
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When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.
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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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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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At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.
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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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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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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.
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I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals.
E. M. FORSTER






