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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.

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
Light
Failed
Dogged
Character
Attempt
Inverted
Human
Interests
Ulysses
Humans
Dog
Simplification
Make
Succeed
Mud
Hell
Sweetness
Interest
Dirt
Universe
Cover

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Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there?
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Love is always being given where it is not required.
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One can run away from women, turn them out, or give in to them. No fourth course.
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The traveller who has gone to Italy to study the tactile values of Giotto, or the corruption of the Papacy, may return remembering nothing but the blue sky and the men and women who live under it.
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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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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.
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A critic has no right to the narrowness which is the frequent prerogative of the creative artist.
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The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead. He can only gain that conception through personal experience, and he can only use his personal experiences when he is a genius.
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Only a struggle twists sentimentality and lust together into love.
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Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly they are still entangled with the desire for ownership.
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The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world.
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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.
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The emotions may be endless. The more we express them, the more we may have to express.
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Only connect!...Only connect the prose and the passion.
E. M. Forster
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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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I don't think literature will be purged until its philosophic pretentiousness is extruded, and I shant live to see that purge, nor perhaps when it has happened will anything survive.
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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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Pathos, piety, courage, they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value.
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Hope, politeness, the blowing of a nose, the squeak of a boot, all produce boum.
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Solidity, caution, integrity, efficiency. Lack of imagination, hypocrisy. These qualities characterize the middle classes in everycountry, but in England they are national characteristics.
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