E.M. Forster
Novelist
1879-01-01
Quotes by E.M. Forster
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The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists.
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The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then queen died of grief is a plot.
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Beauty ought to look a little surprised: it is the emotion that best suits her face. The beauty who does not look surprised, who accepts her position as her due - she reminds us too much of a prima donna.
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Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return.
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Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man.
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The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.
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Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
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It is my fate and perhaps my temperament to sign agreements with fools.
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Letters have to pass two tests before they can be classed as good: they must express the personality both of the writer and of the recipient.
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I am so used to seeing the sort of play which deals with one man and two women. They do not leave me with the feeling I have made a full theatrical meal they do not give me the experience of the multiplicity of life.
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How can I know what I think till I see what I say?
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The fact is we can only love what we know personally. And we cannot know much. In public affairs, in the rebuilding of civilization, something less dramatic and emotional is needed, namely tolerance.
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The English countryside, its growth and its destruction, is a genuine and tragic theme.
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Only a struggle twists sentimentality and lust together into love.
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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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We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet.
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So, two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism.
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It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness.
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Very notable was his distinction between coarseness and vulgarity, coarseness, revealing something; vulgarity, concealing something.
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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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