One has two duties – to be worried and not to be worried.
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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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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Outside the arch, always there seemed another arch. And beyond the remotest echo, a silence.
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It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and, close below, Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road.
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One of the evils of money is that it tempts us to look at it rather than at the things that it buys.
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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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Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown
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We move between two darknesses.
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Life is sometimes life and sometimes only a drama, and one must learn to distinguish t’other from which . . .
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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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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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Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.
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We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won’t do harm – yes, choose a place where you won’t do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.
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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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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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How can I know what I think till I see what I say?
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Adventures do occur, but not punctually.
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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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I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals.
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Don’t be mysterious; there isn’t the time.
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For it is a serious thing to have been watched. We all radiate something curiously intimate when we believe ourselves to be alone.
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How can I know what I think till I see what I say?
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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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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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You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you.
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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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There’s never any great risk as long as you have money.
E. M. FORSTER