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The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead. He can only gain that conception through personal experience, and he can only use his personal experiences when he is a genius.

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
Must
Genius
Historians
Men
Move
Historian
World
Personal
Conception
Dead
Behave
Literature
Gain
Moving
Experiences
Use
Gains
Experience
Otherwise

More quotes by E. M. Forster

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I would rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave.
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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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Be soft, even if you stand to get squashed.
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The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected.
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Books have to be read (worse luck it takes so long a time). It is the only way of discovering what they contain. A few savage tribes eat them, but reading is the only method of assimilation revealed to the West.
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There is an aristocracy of the sensitive. They represent the true human tradition of permanent victory over cruelty and chaos.
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Man can learn everything if he will but try.
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The historian records, but the novelist creates.
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How can I know what I think till I see what I say?
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When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.
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But Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.
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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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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.
E. M. Forster
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All that is observable in a man-that is to say his actions and such of his spiritual existence as can be deduced from his actions-falls into the domain of history.
E. M. Forster
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Tolerance is just a makeshift, suitable for an overcrowded and overheated planet. It carries on when love gives out, and love generally gives out as soon as we move away from our home and our friends.
E. M. Forster
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Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its highest. Live in fragments no longer
E. M. Forster
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Books have to be read it is the only way of discovering what they contain.
E. M. Forster
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Do not be proud of your inconsistency. It is a pity, it is a pity that we should be equipped like this. It is a pity that Man cannot be at the same time impressive and truthful.
E. M. Forster
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This element of surprise or mystery the detective element as it is sometimes rather emptily called is of great importance in a plot.
E. M. Forster
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If God could tell the story of the Universe, the Universe would become fictitious.
E. M. Forster