E. M. Forster Quotes
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I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I'd like to be.
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The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.
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Before the civil war, Pottibakia was a normal member of the Comity of Nations. She erected tariff walls, broke treaties, persecuted minorities, obstructed at conferences unless she was convinced there was no danger of a satisfactory solution; then she strained every nerve in the cause of peace.
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Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.
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It is impossible to foretell the future with any degree of accuracy, that it is impossible to rehearse life. A fault in the scenery, a face in the audience, an interruption of the audience on to the stage, and all our carefully planned gesture mean nothing, or mean too much.
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The woman who can't influence her husband to vote the way she wants ought to be ashamed of herself.
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It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness.
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I'm a holy man minus the holiness.
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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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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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One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.
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For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better.
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Surely the only sound foundation for a civilization is a sound state of mind.
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The sort of poetry I seek resides in objects man can't touch.
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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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If there is on earth a house with many mansions, it is the house of words.
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We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.
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Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.
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One marvels why the middle classes still insist on so much discomfort for their children at such expense to themselves.
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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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The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.
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Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.
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Your letter firmed me up a lot. It certainly is a comfort to know that my work is respected by someone whom I respect and am as fond as you. It confirms my beliefe that life is notall nonsense and cruelty-the inversion of Victorian complacency-but has hard spots of sense and love bobbing about in it here and there.
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I have no mystic faith in the people. I have in the individual.