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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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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
Life
Suddenly
Inner
Ulterior
Pay
Conducted
Actually
Scrutiny
Use
Pays
Moments
Practicals
Self
Motive
Years
Practical
More quotes by E. M. Forster
We may divide characters into flat and round.
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Curiosity is one of the lowest of the human faculties. You will have noticed in daily life that when people are inquisitive they nearly always have bad memories and are usually stupid at bottom.
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It was not that ladies were inferior to men it was that they were different. Their mission was to inspire others to achievement rather than to achieve themselves. Indirectly, by means of tact and a spotless name, a lady could accomplish much. But if she rushed into the fray herself she would be first censured, then despised, and finally ignored.
E. M. Forster
How few writers can prostitute all their powers!
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The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.
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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.
E. M. Forster
Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.
E. M. Forster
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.
E. M. Forster
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.
E. M. Forster
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.
E. M. Forster
I really don't know what happens next -- one so seldom does.
E. M. Forster
For you cannot have gentility without paying for it.
E. M. Forster
At times our need for a sympathetic gesture is so great that we care not what exactly it signifies or how much we may have to pay for it afterwards.
E. M. Forster
Aziz winked at him slowly and said: “...There are many ways of being a man mine is to express what is deepest in my heart.
E. M. Forster
Life - No, I've nothing to teach you about it for the moment. May be writing about it another week.
E. M. Forster
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.
E. M. Forster
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
There has been, is, and always will be every conceivable type of person.
E. M. Forster
Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch.
E. M. Forster
Man can learn everything if he will but try.
E. M. Forster