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How can I know what I think till I see what I say?

E. M. Forster

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E. M. Forster
Age: 91 †
Born: 1879
Born: January 1
Died: 1970
Died: June 7
Biographer
Essayist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
London
England
Edward Morgan Forster
E Forster
EM Forster
Till
Logic
Literature
Writing
Think
Thinking

More quotes by E. M. Forster

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Life is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.
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Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch.
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England still waits for the supreme moment of her literature--for the great poet who shall voice her, or, better still, for the thousand little poets whose voices shall pass into our common talk.
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In the creative state a man is taken out of himself.
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The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty.
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There was something better in life than this rub­bish, if only he could get to it—love—nobility—big spaces where passion clasped peace, spaces no science could reach, but they existed for ever, full of woods some of them, and arched with majestic sky and a friend. . .
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All invitations must proceed from heaven perhaps perhaps it is futile for men to initiate their own unity, they do but widen the gulfs between them by the attempt.
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A critic has no right to the narrowness which is the frequent prerogative of the creative artist.
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Lord I disbelieve - help thou my unbelief.
E. M. Forster
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All a child's life depends on the ideal it has of its parents. Destroy that and everything goes — morals, behaviour, everything. Absolute trust in some one else is the essence of education.
E. M. Forster
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They had nothing in common but the English language.
E. M. Forster
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Hope, politeness, the blowing of a nose, the squeak of a boot, all produce boum.
E. M. Forster
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But I have seen my obstacles: trivialities, learning and poetry. This last needs explaining: the old artist's readiness to dissolve characters into a haze. Characters cannot come alive and fight and guide the world unless the novelist wants them to remain characters.
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There are moments when the inner life actually 'pays,' when years of self-scrutiny, conducted for no ulterior motive, are suddenly of practical use.
E. M. Forster
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I hated the idleness, the stupidity, the respectability, the petty unselfishness.
E. M. Forster
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All this fame and money, which have so thrilled me when they came to others, leave me cold when they come to me. I am not an ascetic, but I don't know what to do with them, and my daily life has never been so trying, and there is no one to fill it emotionally.
E. M. Forster
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He had shown her all the workings of his soul, mistaking this for love.
E. M. Forster
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[...] it is right to be kind and even sacrifice ourselves to people who need kindness and lie in our way - otherwise, besides failing to help them, we run into the aridity of self-development. To seek for recipients of one's goodness, to play the Potted Jesus leads to the contray the Christian danger.
E. M. Forster
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He doesn't want you to be real, and to think and to live. He doesn't love you. But I love you. I want you to have your own thoughts and ideas and feelings, even when I hold you in my arms.
E. M. Forster
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I don't know what to think until I see what I've said.
E. M. Forster