E. M. Forster Zitate auf Englisch

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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

Surely the only sound foundation for a civilization is a sound state of mind.

E. M. Forster

One marvels why the middle classes still insist on so much discomfort for their children at such expense to themselves.

E. M. Forster

Most quarrels are inevitable at the time; incredible afterwards.

E. M. Forster

It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness.

E. M. Forster

Nonsense and beauty have close connections.

E. M. Forster

Reverence is fatal to literature.

E. M. Forster

I am so used to seeing the sort of play which deals with one man and two women. They do not leave me with the feeling I have made a full theatrical meal they do not give me the experience of the multiplicity of life.

E. M. Forster

At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.

E. M. Forster

Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man.

E. M. Forster

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.

E. M. Forster

I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I'd like to be.

E. M. Forster

The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.

E. M. Forster

Ideas are fatal to caste.

E. M. Forster

America is rather like life. You can usually find in it what you look for. It will probably be interesting, and it is sure to be large.

E. M. Forster

We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand.

E. M. Forster

The fact is we can only love what we know personally. And we cannot know much. In public affairs, in the rebuilding of civilization, something less dramatic and emotional is needed, namely tolerance.

E. M. Forster

The woman who can't influence her husband to vote the way she wants ought to be ashamed of herself.

E. M. Forster

If there is on earth a house with many mansions, it is the house of words.

E. M. Forster

Love is always being given where it is not required.

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Only a struggle twists sentimentality and lust together into love.

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We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet.

E. M. Forster

The sadness of the incomplete, the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art.

E. M. Forster

England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.

E. M. Forster

Paganism is infectious, more infectious than diphtheria or piety.

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The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.

E. M. Forster

For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better.

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Charm, in most men and nearly all women, is a decoration.

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 wrong way.

E. M. Forster

No man can be an agnostic who has a sense of humour.

E. M. Forster

One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.

E. M. Forster

So, two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism.

E. M. Forster

Be soft, even if you stand to get squashed.

E. M. Forster

Liking one person is an extra reason for liking another.

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There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer.

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 us.

E. M. Forster