One has two duties – to be worried and not to be worried.
E. M. FORSTERThe 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.
More E. M. Forster Quotes
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I would rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave.
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What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.
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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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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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When I think of what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love; it is one of the moments for which the world was made.
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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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Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate.
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Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.
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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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We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
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There’s never any great risk as long as you have money.
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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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Though life is very glorious, it is difficult.
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You told me once that we shall be judged by our intentions, not by our accomplishments. I thought it a grand remark. But we must intend to accomplish – not sit intending on a chair.
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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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I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.
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One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.
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To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.
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We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand.
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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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You confuse what’s important with what’s impressive.
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Science is better than sympathy, if only it is science.
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Adventures do occur, but not punctually.
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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.
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I have no mystic faith in the people. I have in the individual.
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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.
E. M. FORSTER