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Love felt and returned, love which our bodies exact and our hearts have transfigured, love which is the most real thing that we shall ever meet, reappeared now as the world's enemy, and she must stifle it.

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
Body
Returned
Ever
Exact
Must
Bodies
Real
Hearts
Heart
Meet
Thing
Shall
Love
Enemy
Transfigured
World
Felt
Stifle

More quotes by E. M. Forster

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I believe we shall come to care about people less and less, Helen. The more people one knows, the easier it becomes to replace them. It's one of the curses of London. I quite expect to end my life caring most for a place.
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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.
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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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Our final experience, like our first, is conjectural. We move between two darkness's.
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Expansion, that is the idea the novelist must cling to, not completion, not rounding off, but opening out.
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Ulysses ... is a dogged attempt to cover the universe with mud, an inverted Victorianism, an attempt to make crossness and dirt succeed where sweetness and light failed, a simplification of the human character in the interests of Hell.
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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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The bully and his victim never quite forget their first relations.
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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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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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If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
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Democracy is not a Beloved Republic really, and never will be. But it is less hateful than other contemporary forms of government, and to that extent deserves our support.
E. M. Forster
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The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say yesterday I was happy, today I am not.
E. M. Forster
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Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch.
E. M. Forster
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How can I know what I think till I see what I say?
E. M. Forster
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When we were only acquaintances, you let me be myself, but now you're always protecting me... I won't be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult. Can't I be trusted to face the truth but I must get it second-hand through you? A woman's place!
E. M. Forster
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England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.
E. M. Forster
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Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence.
E. M. Forster
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Ah, but you see, I didn't want to be fair.
E. M. Forster
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The present flowed by them like a stream. The tree rustled. It had made music before they were born, and would continue after their deaths, but its song was of the moment. The moment had passed. The tree rustled again. Their senses were sharpened, and they seemed to apprehend life. Life passed. The tree rustled again.
E. M. Forster