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For it is a serious thing to have been watched. We all radiate something curiously intimate when we believe ourselves to be alone.

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
Something
Believe
Radiate
Curiously
Watched
Intimate
Serious
Alone
Thing

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I am actually what my age and my upbringing have made me - a bourgeois who adheres to the British constitution, adheres to it rather than supports it, and the fact that this isn't dignified doesn't worry me.
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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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I am an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.
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The novelist, unlike many of his colleagues, makes up a number of word-masses roughly describing himself (roughly: niceties shallcome later), gives them names and sex, assigns them plausible gestures, and causes them to speak by the use of inverted commas, and perhaps to behave consistently.
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Humility is a quality for which I have only a limited admiration. In many phases of life it is a great mistake and degenerates into defensiveness or hypocrisy.
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He had known so much about her once -what she thought, how she felt, the reasons for her actions. And now he only knew that he loved her, and all the other knowledge seemed passing from him just as he needed it most.
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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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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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She must be assured that it is not a criminal offense to love at first sight.
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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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Their quarrel was no more surprising than are most quarrels — inevitable at the time, incredible afterwards.
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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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She loved him absolutely, perhaps for half an hour.
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Life - No, I've nothing to teach you about it for the moment. May be writing about it another week.
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By the side of the everlasting Why there is a Yes--a transitory Yes if you like, but a Yes.
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Pathos, piety, courage, they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value.
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Romance only dies with life. No pair of pincers will ever pull it out of us. But there is a spurious sentiment which cannot resist the unexpected and the incongruous and the grotesque. A touch will loosen it, and the sooner it goes from us the better.
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Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.
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Hope, politeness, the blowing of a nose, the squeak of a boot, all produce boum.
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I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man's pleasure when they come a cropper.
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