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The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal. Both assumptions are false: both of them must be accepted as true if we are to go on eating and working and loving, and are to keep open a few breathing holes for the human spirit.

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
Society
False
Keep
Accepted
Spirit
Loving
Assumptions
True
Eating
Immortal
Human
Eternal
Assumption
Humans
Respect
Holes
Must
Open
Breathing
People
Working
Behave

More quotes by E. M. Forster

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Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.
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Towns are after all excrescences, grey fluxions, where men, hurrying to find one another, have lost themselves.
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One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.
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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.
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How few writers can prostitute all their powers!
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Science is better than sympathy, if only it is science.
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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.
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Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.
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Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate.
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There is much good luck in the world, but it is luck. We are none of us safe. We are children, playing or quarrelling on the line.
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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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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!
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What the world most needs today are negative virtues - not minding people, not being huffy, touchy, irritable or revengeful.
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
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He was obliged however to throw over Christianity. Those who base their conduct upon what they are rather than upon what they ought to be, always must throw it over in the end . . . .
E. M. Forster
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Chess is a forcing house where the fruits of character can ripen more fully than in life
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.
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She must be assured that it is not a criminal offense to love at first sight.
E. M. Forster
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When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.
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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