The collection / 200 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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200 results · Page 8 of 9Play this collection ▷

01c. 1901 AD

…But so few of us think clearly about our own private incomes, and admit that independent thoughts are in nine cases out of ten the result of independent means.

E.M. Forster / quote

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02c. 1901 AD

It is not difficult to stand above the conventions when we leave no hostages among them; men can always be more unconventional than women, and a bachelor of independent means need encounter no difficulties at all.

E.M. Forster / quote

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03c. 1901 AD

He lived to near the things he loved to seem poetical.

E.M. Forster / quote

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04c. 1901 AD

There's never any great risk as long as you have money.

E.M. Forster / quote

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05c. 1901 AD

I am an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.

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06c. 1901 AD

It comes to this then: there always have been people like me and always will be, and generally they have been persecuted.

E.M. Forster / quote

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07c. 1901 AD

Consequently the Wolfenden recommendations will be indefinitely rejected, police prosecutions will continue and Clive on the bench will continue to sentence Alec in the dock. Maurice may get off.

E.M. Forster / quote

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08c. 1901 AD

She was as bored as her brother would have been, and had not his gift of listening beneath words.

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09c. 1901 AD

And Englishmen like posing as gods.

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10c. 1901 AD

Most of the inhabitants of India do not mind how India is governed. Nor are the lower animals of England concerned about England, but in the tropics the indifference is more prominent, the inarticulate world is closer at hand and readier to resume control as soon as men are tired.

E.M. Forster / quote

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11c. 1901 AD

It never bored them to hear words, words; they breathed them with the cool night air, never stopping to analyse; the name of the poet, Hafiz, Hali, Iqbal, was sufficient guarantee. India—a hundred Indias—whispered outside beneath the indifferent moon, but for the time India seemed one and their own, and they regained their departed greatness by hearing its departure lamented, they felt young again because reminded that youth must fly.

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12c. 1901 AD

And Aziz in an awful rage danced this way and that, not knowing what to do, and cried: "Down with the English anyhow. That's certain. Clear out, you fellows, double quick, I say. We may hate one another, but we hate you most. If I don't make you go, Ahmed will, Karim will, if it's flfty-flve hundred years we shall get rid of you, yes, we shall drive every blasted Englishman into the sea, and then "—he rode against him furiously— "and then," he concluded, half kissing him, "you and I shall be friends.

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13c. 1901 AD

Only connect!

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14c. 1901 AD

A friendliness, as of dwarfs shaking hands, was in the air...

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15c. 1901 AD

Chicago - a facade of skyscrapers facing a lake and behind the facade every type of dubiousness.

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16c. 1901 AD

In the creative state a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing with his normal experiences and out of the mixture he makes a work of art.

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17c. 1901 AD

Faith to my mind is a stiffening process a sort of mental starch.

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18c. 1901 AD

An efficiency-regime cannot be run without a few heroes stuck about it to carry off the dullness - much as plums have to be put into a bad pudding to make it palatable.

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19c. 1901 AD

It is pleasant to be transferred from an office where one is afraid of a sergeant-major into an office where one can intimidate generals and perhaps this is why history is so attractive to the more timid among us.

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20c. 1901 AD

Failure and success seem to have been allotted to men by their stars. But they retain the power of wriggling of fighting with their star or against it and in the whole universe the only really interesting movement is this wriggle.

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21c. 1901 AD

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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22c. 1901 AD

How can I know what I think till I see what I say?

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23c. 1901 AD

Love is always being given where it is not required.

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24c. 1901 AD

What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?

E.M. Forster / quote

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