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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
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Rounds
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More quotes by E. M. Forster

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If Miss Honeychurch ever takes to live as she plays, it will be very exciting--both for us and for her.
E. M. Forster
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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.
E. M. Forster
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...the true spirit of gastronomic joylessness. Porridge fills the Englishman up, and prunes clear him out.
E. M. Forster
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The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected.
E. M. Forster
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Romance only dies with life. No pair of pincers will ever pull it out of us. But there is a spurious sentiment which cannot resist the unexpected and the incongruous and the grotesque. A touch will loosen it, and the sooner it goes from us the better.
E. M. Forster
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I'd far rather leave a thought behind me than a child. Other people can have children.
E. M. Forster
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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.
E. M. Forster
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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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It's not what people do to you, but what they mean, that hurts.
E. M. Forster
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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.
E. M. Forster
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England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.
E. M. Forster
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God is not Love in the East. He is Power, although Mercy may temper it.
E. M. Forster
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We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.
E. M. Forster
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Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish!
E. M. Forster
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Expansion, that is the idea the novelist must cling to, not completion, not rounding off, but opening out.
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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Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.
E. M. Forster
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No one is more triumphant than the man who chooses a worthy subject and masters all its facts.
E. M. Forster
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I hated the idleness, the stupidity, the respectability, the petty unselfishness.
E. M. Forster
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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.
E. M. Forster