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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
Serious
Alone
Thing
Something
Believe
Radiate
Curiously
Watched
Intimate

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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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There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer.
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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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Surely the only sound foundation for a civilization is a sound state of mind.
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Their quarrel was no more surprising than are most quarrels — inevitable at the time, incredible afterwards.
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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.
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I have said that each aspect of the novel demands a different quality of the reader. Well, the prophetic aspect demands two qualities: humility and the suspension of the sense of humour.
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The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world.
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Of course he despised the world as a whole every thoughtful man should it is almost a test of refinement.
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Have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet at the same time - beautiful?
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This solitude opressed her she was accustomed to have her thoughts confirmed by others or, at all events, contradicted it was too dreadful not to know whether she was thinking right or wrong.
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The traveller who has gone to Italy to study the tactile values of Giotto, or the corruption of the Papacy, may return remembering nothing but the blue sky and the men and women who live under it.
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Chess is a forcing house where the fruits of character can ripen more fully than in life
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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.
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Be soft, even if you stand to get squashed.
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Oxford is Oxford: not a mere receptacle for youth, like Cambridge. Perhaps it wants its inmates to love it rather than to love one another.
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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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When love flies it is remembered not as love but as something else. Blessed are the uneducated, who forget it entirely, and are never conscious of folly or pruriency in the past, of long aimless conversations.
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It is devilish difficult to criticise society & also create human beings.
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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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