One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.
E. M. FORSTERTo make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.
More E. M. Forster Quotes
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I won’t be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult.
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The historian records, but the novelist creates.
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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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It is easy to sympathize at a distance,’ said an old gentleman with a beard. ‘I value more the kind word that is spoken close to my ear.
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My conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it.
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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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Though life is very glorious, it is difficult.
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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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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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Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don’t believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art’s sake.
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The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.
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Think before you speak is criticism’s motto; speak before you think, creation’s.
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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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It 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.
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Nonsense and beauty have close connections.
E. M. FORSTER