If I had to choose between betraying my country or betraying my friend, I hope I should have the GUTS to betray my country!


E.M. Forster (18th century writer)

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More E.M. Forster (18th century writer)

Few travelled in these days, for, thanks to the advance of science, the earth was exactly alike all ...
E.M. FORSTER
And Englishmen like posing as gods.
E.M. FORSTER
We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to sav...
E.M. FORSTER
Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
E.M. FORSTER
It isn't possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, mu...
E.M. FORSTER
Only connect!
E.M. FORSTER
How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?
E.M. FORSTER
The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but...
E.M. FORSTER
Then she lay on her back and gazed at the cloudless sky. Mr. Beebe, whose opinion of her rose daily,...
E.M. FORSTER
In daily life we never understand each other, neither complete clairvoyance nor complete confessiona...
E.M. FORSTER
It is so difficult - at least, I find it difficult - to understand people who speak the truth.
E.M. FORSTER
Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wishes to convince others and him...
E.M. FORSTER
How do I know what I think until I see what I say?
E.M. FORSTER
The Arts are not drugs. They are not guaranteed to act when taken. Something as mysterious and capri...
E.M. FORSTER
She thought not so much of what had happened as of how she could describe it.
E.M. FORSTER
We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for...
E.M. FORSTER
Words deserted him immediately. He could only speak when he was not asked to.
E.M. FORSTER
While the Gods are powerful, we learn little about them. It is only in their day of decadence that a...
E.M. FORSTER
Nothing ever happens to me, " she reflected..... An older person at such an hour and in such a place...
E.M. FORSTER
Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order...
E.M. FORSTER
Lucy's Sabbath was generally of this amphibious nature. She kept it without hypocrisy in the morning...
E.M. FORSTER
They sowed the duller vegetables first, and a pleasant feeling of righteous fatigue stole over them ...
E.M. FORSTER
I believe in aristocracy, though -- if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an ...
E.M. FORSTER
You do care a little for me, I know... but nothing to speak of, and you don't love me. I was yours o...
E.M. FORSTER
My father says that there is only one perfect view — the view of the sky straight over our heads, ...
E.M. FORSTER
They had nothing in common but the English language.
E.M. FORSTER
She grew more and more vexed with his dignified behavior. By a cruel irony, she was drawing out what...
E.M. FORSTER
There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshiper may one da...
E.M. FORSTER
To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art.
E.M. FORSTER
If human nature does alter it will be because individuals manage to look at themselves in a new way....
E.M. FORSTER
When I think of what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love; it is one of the moments for ...
E.M. FORSTER
Was Mrs. Wilcox one of the unsatisfactory people- there are many of them- who dangle intimacy and th...
E.M. FORSTER
Why children?' he asked. 'Why always children? For love to end where it begins is far more beautiful...
E.M. FORSTER
I taught him, 'he quavered, "to trust in love. I said:'when love comes, that is reality.' I said: 'P...
E.M. FORSTER
The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.
E.M. FORSTER
I have almost completed a long novel, but it is unpublishable until my death and England's.
E.M. FORSTER
After all, is not a real Hell better than a manufactured Heaven?
E.M. FORSTER
Eccolo!” he exclaimed.

At the same moment the ground gave way, and with a cry she fell ...
E.M. FORSTER
If you pass life by it's jolly well going to pass you by in the future. If you're frightened it's al...
E.M. FORSTER
It is not difficult to stand above the conventions when we leave no hostages among them; men can alw...
E.M. FORSTER
It's not what people do to you, but what they mean, that hurts.
E.M. FORSTER
It all turns on affection now," said Margaret. "Affection. Don't you see?... And affection, when rec...
E.M. FORSTER
We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the stat...
E.M. FORSTER
... there are shadows because there are hills.
E.M. FORSTER
I only know what it is that's wrong with him; not why it is."
And what is it?" asked Lucy fearf...
E.M. FORSTER
I have no profession. It is another example of my decadence. My attitude - quite an indefensible one...
E.M. FORSTER
They wept for humanity, those two, not for themselves. They could not bear that this should be the e...
E.M. FORSTER
Did you ever dream you had a friend, Alec? Someone to last your whole life and you his. I suppose su...
E.M. FORSTER
When we were only acquaintances, you let me be myself, but now you're always protecting me... I won'...
E.M. FORSTER
Vashti was seized with the terrors of direct experience. She shrank back into the room, and the wall...
E.M. FORSTER
You talk as if a god had made the Machine," cried the other. "I believe that you pray to it when you...
E.M. FORSTER
Nature pulls one way and human nature another.
E.M. FORSTER
Most of us are pseudo-scholars...for we are a very large and quite a powerful class, eminent in Chur...
E.M. FORSTER
Mr. Herriton, don’t – please, Mr. Herriton – a dentist. His father’s a dentist.”
Phi...
E.M. FORSTER
…But so few of us think clearly about our own private incomes, and admit that independent thoughts...
E.M. FORSTER
Most of the inhabitants of India do not mind how India is governed. Nor are the lower animals of Eng...
E.M. FORSTER
Adventures do occur, but not punctually.
E.M. FORSTER
The issues Miss Quested had raised were so much more important than she was herself that people inev...
E.M. FORSTER
The house was very quiet, and the fog ... pressed against the windows like an excluded ghost.
E.M. FORSTER
Don't go fighting against the Spring.
E.M. FORSTER
It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of re...
E.M. FORSTER
Of course he despised the world as a whole; every thoughtful man should; it is almost a test of refi...
E.M. FORSTER
It was not that ladies were inferior to men; it was that they were different. Their mission was to i...
E.M. FORSTER
One doesn't come to Italy for niceness," was the retort; "one comes for life. Buon giorno! Buon gior...
E.M. FORSTER
There is much that is immortal in this medieval lady. The dragons have gone, and so have the knights...
E.M. FORSTER
...though nothing is damaged, everything is changed.
E.M. FORSTER
No, he is not tactful, yet have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most ...
E.M. FORSTER
At times our need for a sympathetic gesture is so great that we care not what exactly it signifies o...
E.M. FORSTER
The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intell...
E.M. FORSTER
Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there?
E.M. FORSTER
She only felt that the candle would burn better, the packing go easier, the world be happier, if she...
E.M. FORSTER
Take an old man's word; there's nothing worse than a muddle in all the world. It is easy to face Dea...
E.M. FORSTER
Passion should believe itself irresistible. It should forget civility and consideration and all the ...
E.M. FORSTER
She stopped and leant her elbows against the parapet of the embankment. He did likewise. There is at...
E.M. FORSTER
By the side of the everlasting Why there is a Yes--a transitory Yes if you like, but a Yes.
E.M. FORSTER
Life' wrote a friend of mine, 'is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the in...
E.M. FORSTER
It is fate that I am here,' George persisted, 'but you can call it Italy if it makes you less unhapp...
E.M. FORSTER
Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.
E.M. FORSTER
Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them...
E.M. FORSTER
This desire to govern a woman -- it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together.... But...
E.M. FORSTER
Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.
E.M. FORSTER
I am an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.
E.M. FORSTER
One minute. You know nothing about him. He probably has his own joys and interests- wife, children, ...
E.M. FORSTER
So never give in,” continued the girl, and restated again and again the vague yet convincing plea ...
E.M. FORSTER
He built up a situation that was far enough from the truth. It never occurred to him that Helen was ...
E.M. FORSTER
Don't believe those lies about intellectual people. They're only written to soothe the majority.
E.M. FORSTER
With the first jolt he was in daylight; they had left the gateways of King’s Cross, and were under...
E.M. FORSTER
It comes to this then: there always have been people like me and always will be, and generally they ...
E.M. FORSTER
They had never struggled, and only a struggle twists sentimentality and lust together into love.
E.M. FORSTER
A happy ending was imperative. I shouldn't have bothered to write otherwise. I was determined that i...
E.M. FORSTER
He had a theory that musicians are incredibly complex, and know far less than other artists what the...
E.M. FORSTER
This solitude opressed her; she was accustomed to have her thoughts confirmed by others or, at all e...
E.M. FORSTER
She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own soul, and in the soul of every man...
E.M. FORSTER
The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous,...
E.M. FORSTER
She could not explain in so many words, but she felt that those who prepare for all the emergencies ...
E.M. FORSTER
Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him.
E.M. FORSTER
But the poetry of that kiss, the wonder of it, the magic that there was in life for hours after it--...
E.M. FORSTER
Some leave our life with tears, others with an insane frigidity; Mrs. Wilcox had taken the middle co...
E.M. FORSTER
Away she hurried, not beautiful, not supremely brilliant, but filled with something that took the pl...
E.M. FORSTER
Life's very difficult and full of surprises. At all events, I've got as far as that. To be humble an...
E.M. FORSTER
And the goblins--they had not really been there at all? They were only the phantoms of cowardice and...
E.M. FORSTER
People have their own deaths as well as their own lives, and even if there is nothing beyond death, ...
E.M. FORSTER
She hated war and liked soldiers—it was one of her amiable inconsistencies.
E.M. FORSTER
Science explained people, but could not understand them.
E.M. FORSTER
There's never any great risk as long as you have money.
E.M. FORSTER
I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.
E.M. FORSTER
It is thus, if there is any rule, that we ought to die--neither as victim nor as fanatic, but as the...
E.M. FORSTER
If we lived for ever, what you say would be true. But we have to die, we have to leave life presentl...
E.M. FORSTER
She must be assured that it is not a criminal offense to love at first sight.
E.M. FORSTER
It is only that people are far more different than is pretended. All over the world men and women ar...
E.M. FORSTER
Margaret realized the chaotic nature of our daily life, and its difference from the orderly sequence...
E.M. FORSTER
All men are equal - all men, that is, who possess umbrellas.
E.M. FORSTER
To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it.
E.M. FORSTER
What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our d...
E.M. FORSTER
A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy d...
E.M. FORSTER
The crime of suicide lies rather in its disregard for the feelings of those whom we leave behind.
E.M. FORSTER
Oh, the English! They are always thinking of tea. They carry it by the kilogram, and they are so clu...
E.M. FORSTER
While her lips talked culture, her heart was planning to invite him to tea
E.M. FORSTER
It is the starved imagination, not the well-nourished, that is afraid.
E.M. FORSTER
It makes a difference, doesn't it, whether we fence ourselves in, or whether we are fenced out by th...
E.M. FORSTER
…to descend from bright heaven to earth, whereon there are shadows because there are hills…
E.M. FORSTER
A friendliness, as of dwarfs shaking hands, was in the air...
E.M. FORSTER
He never even thought of tenderness and emotion; his considerations about Durham remained cold. Durh...
E.M. FORSTER
Each voice on the Web, no matter how small, speaks of this era to the next generation and says, 'quo...
WRITER FOX
Quotations are word innovations.
WRITER FOX
Why do you eat? Why to sleep? If you cant be a trustworthy person, cant be a true lover, cant be a g...
WRITER GRADED
I quit my 9-5 job in December 2017 and bought a one way ticket to Indonesia. Since then I’ve been ...
UNKNOWN WRITER
We are limited, not by our abilities, but by our vision. You gotta have a BIG vision to know what yo...
UNKNOWN WRITER
Come with me All Hallow's night We'll frighten everyone in sight Such pranks for once, are justified...
19TH CENTURY HALLOWEEN POSTCARD
The preacher must have, "bonds of a servant with the spirit of a king, a king in high, royal, indepe...
E.M. BOUNDS
God’s revelation does not need the light of human genius, the polish and strength of human culture...
E.M. BOUNDS
The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.
E.M. BOUNDS
Our devotions are not measured by the clock, but time is of the essence. The ability to wait, and st...
E.M. BOUNDS
What the Church needs to-day is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and nove...
E.M. BOUNDS
Here's to real heroes, not the ones who carry us off into the sunset but the ones who help us choose...
E.M. TIPPETTS
The pain is real. Flowing as a brook beneath my flesh. I am broken, and yet, I still breathe.
E.M. BENTON
(Donations) slow down during the summer. I've only been here since the first of the year, but it has...
BETTY SMITH (WRITER)
I wrote about people who liked fake fireplaces in their parlor, who thought a brass horse with a clo...
BETTY SMITH (WRITER)
Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time
BETTY SMITH (WRITER)
I think we are very close to being ready.
BETTY SMITH (WRITER)
She has finished college classes and graduated and got her life together. She has helped others get ...
BETTY SMITH (WRITER)
The difference between rich and poor is that the poor do everything with their own hands and the ric...
BETTY SMITH (WRITER)
Forgiveness is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing.
BETTY SMITH (WRITER)
It is the end of something simple and the beginning of everything else.
JENNIFER BAKER (WRITER)
I am happiest when I am idle. I could live for months without performing any kind of labor, and at t...
ARTEMUS WARD (WRITER)
He is dreadfully married. He's the most married man I ever saw in my life
ARTEMUS WARD (WRITER)
I have already given two cousins to the war and I stand ready to sacrifice my wife's brother.
ARTEMUS WARD (WRITER)
My pollertics, like my religion, being of an exceedin' accomodatin' character
ARTEMUS WARD (WRITER)
Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time
BETTY SMITH (WRITER)
Why is this thus? What is the reason for this thusness?
ARTEMUS WARD (WRITER)
Why care for grammar as long as we are good?
ARTEMUS WARD (WRITER)
It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us in trouble. It's the things we know that ain't...
ARTEMUS WARD (WRITER)
You have Van Gogh's ear for music
ARTEMUS WARD (WRITER)
Let us all be happy and live within our means, even if we have to borrow the money to do it with
ARTEMUS WARD (WRITER)
It ain't so much what people don't know that hurts as what they know that ain't so.
ARTEMUS WARD (WRITER)
We've used a lot of stuff since the Can-Care-A-Van. We go through pork and beans and green beans and...
BETTY SMITH (WRITER)
Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. Then your time on...
BETTY SMITH (WRITER)
Dear God, let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. L...
BETTY SMITH (WRITER)
I can't save the world, but this is one chance for something good to happen to children.
BETTY SMITH (WRITER)
You should have heard him 10 minutes ago.
BETTY SMITH (WRITER)
There's a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its s...
BETTY SMITH (WRITER)
I'm not a politician and my other habits are good.
ARTEMUS WARD (WRITER)
Because that's the thing about hope- you can never kill it yourself.
ALLY CARTER [WRITER]
The key thing is that you start every film from sort of a blank page, almost like you discover it li...
MARC FORSTER
Genius is the power of lighting one's own fire.
JOHN FORSTER
Genius and its rewards are briefly told: A liberal nature and a niggard doom, A difficult jour...
JOHN FORSTER
You can win it in the late innings if you never quit.
ROBERT FORSTER
I write in the morning, I walk in the afternoon and I read in the evening. It's a very easy, lov...
MARGARET FORSTER
Every shot is unique, even if it's just a close-up, an insert of your hand. You've got to wo...
ROBERT FORSTER
God's always got a custard pie up his sleeve.
MARGARET FORSTER
You have to have energy off the bench. That's an area we can get an advantage, so our reserves have ...
CHRIS FORSTER
I might be damned today, but tomorrow I promise you'll be taking my place.
KALEY FORSTER
For me, 'The Kite Runner' became about a guy who's emotionally shut down because he hasn...
MARC FORSTER
You've got to internalize the character. You've got to learn the words. These are separate t...
ROBERT FORSTER
It's what you do every time. You isolate what you know, and you create a mental image of what yo...
ROBERT FORSTER
Three days after my brother died, my father was in the hospital. He just did not want to live anymor...
MARC FORSTER
On 'Stranger Than Fiction,' the script was so good that I stuck to every line because it was...
MARC FORSTER
Take Shaun White. A rider of his stature has so many opportunities on and off the board that a team ...
JEREMY FORSTER
I never have that 'we were robbed' feeling when looking around now at where some of our contemporari...
ROBERT FORSTER
The scholarship of Christian academics isn’t recognized as scholarship at all unless it conforms t...
GREG FORSTER
To sustain moral behavior, people need more than simply a list of rules. They need to be people who ...
GREG FORSTER
There is an obvious advantage to the UK industry if its beef is sold in a different section of the c...
ROBERT FORSTER
I do try to be resentful, I really do, but I just can't bring myself to do it.
ROBERT FORSTER
The other thing about this reunion tour is that we're not all being represented by different lawyers...
ROBERT FORSTER
I do try to be resentful, I really do, but I just can't bring myself to do it.
ROBERT FORSTER
It will be the same story as the past two games - we'll see if quick can beat big. We have to make t...
DAVE FORSTER
Our defense did it. In the fourth quarter they were tired, their shots were short. But our offensive...
DAVE FORSTER
The girls were dead-dog excited. We're a little bit worn out but excited, too. We've been close in t...
DAVE FORSTER
A lot better to play like this and win compared to last year. And we hope to carry over the way we s...
DAVE FORSTER
The score was the same, but almost everything else was completely different,
JOHN FORSTER
It's just a transition period. April can still bring some (snowy) stuff here when it gets pretty col...
GARY FORSTER
It's so empowering for that to happen under the supervision of young adults who aren't their parents...
GARY FORSTER
Good camps fulfill a parent's number one concern -- safety -- while supplying experiences and lesson...
GARY FORSTER
What exactly constitutes an emergency in a modelling agency? Two girls fighting to death with a hair...
KATE FORSTER
Liberals and conservatives tend to view the economy in purely materialistic terms. They make growth,...
GREG FORSTER
We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for...
E. M. FORSTER
We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand.
E. M. FORSTER
What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our d...
E. M. FORSTER
To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the ...
E. M. FORSTER
History develops, art stands still.
E. M. FORSTER