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But I have seen my obstacles: trivialities, learning and poetry. This last needs explaining: the old artist's readiness to dissolve characters into a haze. Characters cannot come alive and fight and guide the world unless the novelist wants them to remain characters.

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
Come
Seen
Obstacles
Haze
Needs
Alive
Remain
Dissolve
World
Fighting
Characters
Readiness
Lasts
Poetry
Novelist
Last
Unless
Explaining
Artist
Fight
Novelists
Cannot
Wants
Guide
Trivialities
Character
Learning
Guides
Triviality

More quotes by E. M. Forster

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She must be assured that it is not a criminal offense to love at first sight.
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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.
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The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists.
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The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world.
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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.
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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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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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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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This desire to govern a woman -- it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together.... But I do love you surely in a better way then he does. He thought. Yes -- really in a better way. I want you to have your own thoughts even when I hold you in my arms.
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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Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown
E. M. Forster
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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.
E. M. Forster
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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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Science is better than sympathy, if only it is science.
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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The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul.
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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When that strange race nears the dust and is condemned as untouchable, then nature remembers the physical perfection that she accomplished elsewhere, and throws out a god-not many, but one here and there, to prove to society how little its categories impress her.
E. M. Forster
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Without form, the sensitiveness vanishes.
E. M. Forster
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Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate.
E. M. Forster