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You Want To Love Everyone Equally, And That's Worse Than Impossible--it's Wrong.
-E. M. Forster
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You Want To Love

E. M. Forster
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You Want To Love Everyone Equally, And That's Worse Than Impossible--it's Wrong.

Understanding the Quote: "you want to love everyone equally, and that's worse than impossible--it's wrong...."

This quote by E. M. Forster reflects deeply on the theme of love. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Love, Equality, Want, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how E. M. Forster interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About E. M. Forster

E. M. Forster is celebrated for insightful thoughts on love and equality. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Love
Equality
Want
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We May Divide Characters Into Flat And Round.
Character
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Let Her Go To Italy!" He Cried. "let Her Meddle With What She Doesn't Understand!
Let Her Go
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At Times Our Need For A Sympathetic Gesture Is So Great That We Care Not What Exactly It Signifies Or How Much We May Have To Pay For It Afterwards.
Needs
Care
May
I Do Not Believe In Belief.
Believe
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God Is Not Love In The East. He Is Power, Although Mercy May Temper It.
Love
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I Distrust Great Men... I Believe In Aristocracy, Though... Its Members Are To Be Found In All Nations And Classes, And All Through The Ages, And There Is A Secret Understanding Between Them When They Meet... They Are Sensitive For Others As Well As For Themselves, They Are Considerate Without Being Fussy, Their Pluck Is Not Swankiness But The Power To Endure, And They Can Take A Joke.
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Love Is Always Being Given Where It Is Not Required.
Love
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'a Friend,' He Repeated, Sentimental Suddenly. 'someone To Last Your Whole Life And You His. I Suppose Such A Thing Can't Really Happen Outside Sleep.'
Dream
Sleep
Lasts
Only Connect!...only Connect The Prose And The Passion.
Passion
Classic
Howards End
I Am Certainly An Ought And Not A Must.
Literature
Ought
A Work Of Art Is Never Finished. It Is Merely Abandoned.
Art
Science
Abandoned
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.
Thinking
Literature
Philosophic
It Was Pleasant To Wake Up In Florence, To Open The Eyes Upon A Bright Bare Room, With A Floor Of Red Tiles Which Look Clean Though They Are Not; With A Painted Ceiling Whereon Pink Griffins And Blue Amorini Sport In A Forest Of Yellow Violins And Bassoons. It Was Pleasant, Too, To Fling Wide The Windows, Pinching The Fingers In Unfamiliar Fastenings, To Lean Out Into Sunshine With Beautiful Hills And Trees And Marble Churches Opposite, And, Close Below, Arno, Gurgling Against The Embankment Of The Road.
Beautiful
Sports
Eye
One Must Be Fond Of People And Trust Them If One Is Not To Make A Mess Of Life.
Friendship
Trust
Real Friends
Personal Relations Are The Important Thing For Ever And Ever, And Not This Outer Life Of Telegrams And Anger.
Life
Relationship
Important
It Is Now Only In Letters I Write What I Feel: Not In Literature Any More, And I Seldom Say It, Because I Keep Trying To Be Amusing.
Writing
Trying
Literature
The Sun Was Already Declining And Each Of The Trees Held A Premonition Of Night.
Night
Tree
Sun
Men Were Not Gods After All, But As Human And As Clumsy As Girls.
Girl
Men
Room With A View
...though Nothing Is Damaged, Everything Is Changed.
Changed
It Makes A Difference Doesn't It, Whether We Fully Fence Ourselves In, Or Whether We Are Fenced Out By The Barriers Of Others?
Differences
Making A Difference
Fence
Men Yearn For Poetry Though They May Not Confess It; They Desire That Joy Shall Be Graceful And Sorrow August And Infinity Have A Form.
Men
August
Poetry
It Is My Fate And Perhaps My Temperament To Sign Agreements With Fools.
Fate
Agreement
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School Was The Unhappiest Time Of My Life And The Worst Trick It Ever Played On Me Was To Pretend That It Was The World In Miniature. For It Hindered Me From Discovering How Lovely And Delightful And Kind The World Can Be, And How Much Of It Is Intelligible.
School
Lovely
World
Without Form, The Sensitiveness Vanishes.
Form
Values
How Few Writers Can Prostitute All Their Powers!
Power
How Can The Mind Take Hold Of Such A Country? Generations Of Invaders Have Tried, But They Remain In Exile. The Important Towns They Build Are Only Retreats, Their Quarrels The Malaise Of Men Who Cannot Find Their Way Home. India Knows Of Their Trouble. She Knows Of The Whole World's Trouble, To Its Uttermost Depth. She Calls "come" Through Her Hundred Mouths, Through Objects Ridiculous And August. But Come To What? She Has Never Defined. She Is Not A Promise, Only An Appeal.
Country
Home
Men
I Really Don't Know What Happens Next -- One So Seldom Does.
Doe
Next
Happens
Truth Is A Flower In Whose Neighbourhood Others Must Wither.
Flower
Truth Is
Neighbourhoods
You Do Care A Little For Me, I Know... But Nothing To Speak Of, And You Don't Love Me. I Was Yours Once Till Death If You'd Cared To Keep Me, But I'm Someone Else's Now... And He's Mine In A Way That Shocks You, But Why Don't You Stop Being Shocked, And Attend To Your Own Happiness.
Care
Littles
Way
You Can Transmute Love, Ignore It, Muddle It, But You Can Never Pull It Out Of You.
Romantic
Room With A View
Muddle
Failure Or Success Seems 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 The Wriggle.
Stars
Failure
Fighting
Give, Do Not Lend; After Death Who Will Thank You?
Giving
After Death
Not Only In Sex, But In All Things Men Have Moved Blindly, Have Evolved Out Of Slime To Dissolve Into It When This Accident Of Consequences Is Over.
Life
Sex
Men
I Seem Fated To Pass Through The World Without Colliding With It Or Moving It — And I'm Sure I Can't Tell You Whether The Fate's Good Or Evil. I Don't Die — I Don't Fall In Love. And If Other People Die Or Fall In Love They Always Do It When I'm Just Not There.
Falling In Love
Moving
Fate
I Am An Unspeakable Of The Oscar Wilde Sort.
Oscars
Wilde
Unspeakable
I Never Could Get On With Representative Individuals But People Who Existed On Their Own Account And With Whom It Might Therefore Be Possible To Be Friends.
People
Might
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He Built Up A Situation That Was Far Enough From The Truth. It Never Occurred To Him That Helen Was To Blame. He Forgot The Intensity Of Their Talk, The Charm That Had Been Lent Him By Sincerity, The Magic Of Oniton Under Darkness And Of The Whispering River. Helen Loved The Absolute. Leonard Had Been Ruined Absolutely, And Had Appeared To Her As A Man Apart, Isolated From The World. A Real Man, Who Cared For Adventure And Beauty, Who Desired To Live Decently And Pay His Way, Who Could Have Travelled More Gloriously Through Life Than The Juggernaut Car That Was Crushing Him.
Crush
Real
Adventure
Democracy Is Not A Beloved Republic Really, And Never Will Be. But It Is Less Hateful Than Other Contemporary Forms Of Government, And To That Extent Deserves Our Support.
Government
Support
Democracy
It Is Easy To Sympathize At A Distance,' Said An Old Gentleman With A Beard. 'i Value More The Kind Word That Is Spoken Close To My Ear.
Distance
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Ears
No Disease Of The Imagination Is So Difficult To Cure, As That Which Is Complicated With The Dread Of Guilt : Fancy And Conscience Then Act Interchangeably Upon Us, And So Often Shift Their Places, That The Illusions Of One Are Not Distinguished From The Dictates Of The Other.
Imagination
Guilt
Disease
It Isn't Possible To Love And Part. You Will Wish That It Was. You Can Transmute Love, Ignore It, Muddle It, But You Can Never Pull It Out Of You. I Know By Experience That The Poets Are Right: Love Is Eternal.
Love
Romantic
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I Won't Be Protected. I Will Choose For Myself What Is Ladylike And Right. To Shield Me Is An Insult.
Shields
Insult
Room With A View
There Is An Aristocracy Of The Sensitive. They Represent The True Human Tradition Of Permanent Victory Over Cruelty And Chaos.
Victory
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Life Never Gives Us What We Want At The Moment That We Consider Appropriate.
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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.
Integrity
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There Are Occasions When I Would Rather Feel Like A Fly Than A Spider.
Feelings
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It Is Easy To Face Death And Fate, And The Things That Sound So Dreadful. It Is On My Muddles That I Look Back With Horror--on Thethings That I Might Have Avoided.
Fate
Sound
Looks
People In A Novel Can Be Understood Completely By The Reader, If The Novelist Can Be Understood Completely By The Reader, If The Novelist Wishes; Their Inner As Well As Their Outer Life Can Be Exposed.
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The Final Test For A Novel Will Be Our Affection For It, As It Is The Test Of Our Friends, And Of Anything Else Which We Cannot Define.
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I Believe In Teaching People To Be Individuals, And To Understand Other Individuals.
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I Can Only Do What's Easy. I Can Only Entice And Be Enticed. I Can't, And Won't, Attempt Difficult Relations. If I Marry It Will Either Be A Man Who's Strong Enough To Boss Me Or Whom I'm Strong Enough To Boss. So I Shan't Ever Marry, For There Aren't Such Men. And Heaven Help Any One Whom I Do Marry, For I Shall Certainly Run Away From Him Before You Can Say 'jack Robinson.
Running
Strong
Men
When I Think Of What Life Is, And How Seldom Love Is Answered By Love; It Is One Of The Moments For Which The World Was Made.
Love Is
Thinking
World
I Hated The Idleness, The Stupidity, The Respectability, The Petty Unselfishness.
Hate
Stupidity
Petty
You Want To Love Everyone Equally, And That's Worse Than Impossible--it's Wrong.
Love
Equality
Want
I Only Wish The Poets Would Say This Too: Love Is Of The Body; Not The Body, But Of The The Body. Ah! The Misery That Would Be Saved If We Confessed That! Ah! For A Little Directness To Liberate The Soul!
Love Is
Soul
Wish
This Element Of Surprise Or Mystery — The Detective Element As It Is Sometimes Rather Emptily Called — Is Of Great Importance In A Plot. It Occurs Through A Suspension Of The Time-sequence; A Mystery Is A Pocket In Time, And It Occurs Crudely, As In "why Did The Queen Die?" And More Subtly In Half-explained Gestures And Words, The True Meaning Of Which Only Dawns Pages Ahead. Mystery Is Essential To A Plot, And Cannot Be Appreciated Without Intelligence.
Queens
Marching On
Appreciate
There Is Something Majestic In The Bad Taste Of Italy.
Literature
Taste
Majestic
There Was Something Better In Life Than This Rub­bish, If Only He Could Get To It—love—nobility—big Spaces Where Passion Clasped Peace, Spaces No Science Could Reach, But They Existed For Ever, Full Of Woods Some Of Them, And Arched With Majestic Sky And A Friend. . .
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Sky
Space
All A Child's Life Depends On The Ideal It Has Of Its Parents. Destroy That And Everything Goes — Morals, Behaviour, Everything. Absolute Trust In Some One Else Is The Essence Of Education.
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Parent
Italy Is Such A Delightful Place To Live In If You Happen To Be A Man. There One May Enjoy That Exquisite Luxury Of Socialism--that True Socialism Which Is Based Not On Equality Of Income Or Character, But On The Equality Of Manners. In The Democracy Of The Caffè Or The Street The Great Question Of Our Life Has Been Solved, And The Brotherhood Of Man Is A Reality. But It Is Accomplished At The Expense Of The Sisterhood Of Women.
Character
Reality
Sisterhood
A Poem Is True If It Hangs Together. Information Points To Something Else. A Poem Points To Nothing But Itself.
Poetry
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Literature
The Advance Of Regret Can Be So Gradual That It Is Impossible To Say "yesterday I Was Happy, Today I Am Not.
Regret
Yesterday
Today
It Is The Vice Of A Vulgar Mind To Be Thrilled By Bigness.
Mind
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Literature
What The World Most Needs Today Are Negative Virtues - Not Minding People, Not Being Huffy, Touchy, Irritable Or Revengeful.
People
Huffy
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Belfastas Uncivilised As Ever--savage Black Mothers In Houses Of Dark Red Brick, Friendly Manufacturers Too Drunk To Entertain You When You Arrive. It Amuses Me Till I Get Tired.
Mother
Tired
Dark
A Novelist Can Shift View-point If It Comes Off. ... Indeed, This Power To Expand And Contract Perception (of Which The Shifting View-point Is A Symptom), This Right To Intermittent Knowledge - I Find One Of The Great Advantages Of The Novel-form ... This Intermittence Lends In The Long Run Variety And Colour To The Experiences We Receive.
Running
Views
Long
Ideas Are Fatal To Caste.
Technology
Ideas
Literature
The Woman Who Can't Influence Her Husband To Vote The Way She Wants Ought To Be Ashamed Of Herself.
Husband
Literature
Want
Works Of Art, In My Opinion, Are The Only Objects In The Material Universe To Possess Internal Order, And That Is Why, Though I Don't Believe That Only Art Matters, I Do Believe In Art For Art's Sake.
Art
Believe
Order
Tolerance Is Just A Makeshift, Suitable For An Overcrowded And Overheated Planet. It Carries On When Love Gives Out, And Love Generally Gives Out As Soon As We Move Away From Our Home And Our Friends.
Moving
Home
Giving
Letters Have To Pass Two Tests Before They Can Be Classed As Good: They Must Express The Personality Both Of The Writer And Of The Recipient.
Two
Personality
Letters
Words Deserted Him Immediately. He Could Only Speak When He Was Not Asked To.
Speak
Deserted
Hope, Politeness, The Blowing Of A Nose, The Squeak Of A Boot, All Produce "boum.
Noses
Boots
Absence
Sometimes I Think Too Much Fuss Is Made About Marriage. Century After Century Of Carnal Embracement And We're Still No Nearer To Understanding One Another.
Thinking
Understanding
Too Much
The People I Respect Most Behave As If They Were Immortal And As If Society Was Eternal.
People
Society
Literature
The Idea That Nations Should Love One Another, Or That Business Concerns Or Marketing Boards Should Love One Another, Or That A Man In Portugal Should Love A Man In Peru Of Whom He Has Never Heard -it Is Absurd, Unreal, Dangerous. The Fact Is We Can Only Love What We Know Personally. And We Cannot Know Much.
Love
Men
Ideas
Life - No, I've Nothing To Teach You About It For The Moment. May Be Writing About It Another Week.
Life
Writing
May
Culture Had Worked In Her Own Case, But During The Last Few Weeks She Had Doubted Whether It Humanized The Majority, So Wide And So Widening Is The Gulf That Stretches Between The Natural And The Philosophic Man, So Many The Good Chaps Who Are Wrecked In Trying To Cross It.
Men
Trying
Majority
The King Died And Then The Queen Died Is A Story. The King Died, And Then Queen Died Of Grief Is A Plot.
Kings
Queens
Grief
I Do Like Christmas On The Whole.... In Its Clumsy Way, It Does Approach Peace And Goodwill. But It Is Clumsier Every Year.
Christmas
Holiday
Years
Even A Fellow With A Camera Has His Favourite Subjects, As We Can See Looking Through The Kodak-albums Of Our Friends. One Amateur Prefers The Family Group, Another Bathing Scenes, Another Cows Upon An Alp, Or Kittens Held Upside Down In The Arms Of A Black-faced Child. The Tendency To Choose One Subject Rather Than Another Indicates The Photographer's Temperament. Nevertheless, His Passion Is For Photography Rather Than For Selection, A Kitten Will Serve When No Cows Are Available.
Photography
Children
Passion
Though Life Is Very Glorious, It Is Difficult.
Life Is
Difficult
Glorious
The Armour Of Falsehood Is Subtly Wrought Out Of Darkness, And Hides A Man Not Only From Others, But From His Own Soul.
Honesty
Men
Soul
Was Mrs. Wilcox One Of The Unsatisfactory People- There Are Many Of Them- Who Dangle Intimacy And Then Withdraw It? They Evoke Our Interests And Affections, And Keep The Life Of The Spirit Dawdling Around Them. Then They Withdraw. When Physical Passion Is Involved, There Is A Definite Name For Such Behaviour- Flirting- And If Carried Far Enough, It Is Punishable By Law. But No Law- Not Public Opinion, Even- Punishes Those Who Coquette With Friendship, Though The Dull Ache That They Inflict, The Sense Of Misdirected Effort And Exhaustion, May Be As Intolerable. Was She One Of These?
Passion
Flirting
Law
Our Final Experience, Like Our First, Is Conjectural. We Move Between Two Darkness's.
Moving
Two
Darkness
Sex Begins Before Adolescence, And Survives Sterility; It Is Indeed Coeval With Our Lives, Although At The Mating Age Its Effects Are More Obvious To Society.
Sex
Age
Mating
It Is The Vice Of A Vulgar Mind To Be Thrilled By Bigness, To Think That A Thousand Square Miles Are A Thousand Times More Wonderful Than One Square Mile, And That A Million Square Miles Are Almost The Same As Heaven.
Thinking
Squares
Heaven
He Had Known So Much About Her Once -what She Thought, How She Felt, The Reasons For Her Actions. And Now He Only Knew That He Loved Her, And All The Other Knowledge Seemed Passing From Him Just As He Needed It Most.
Action
Reason
Passing
Pathos, Piety, Courage, They Exist, But Are Identical, And So Is Filth. Everything Exists, Nothing Has Value.
Filth
Pathos
Piety
Those Who Prepared For All The Emergencies Of Life Beforehand May Equip Themselves At The Expense Of Joy.
Life
Joy
Preparation
They Go Forth [into The World] With Well-developed Bodies, Fairly Developed Minds And Undeveloped Hearts. An Undeveloped Heart - Not A Cold One. The Difference Is Important.
Heart
Differences
Mind
In The Light Of Her Son's Comment She Reconsidered The Scene At The Mosque, To See Whose Impression Was Correct. Yes It Could Be Worked Into Quite An Unpleasant Scene. The Doctor Had Begun By Bullying Her, Had Said Mrs Callendar Was Nice, And Then - Finding The Ground Safe - Had Changed; He Had Alternately Whined Over His Grievances And Patronized Her, Had Run A Dozen Ways In A Single Sentence, Had Been Unreliable, Inquisitive, Vain. Yes, It Was All True, But How False As A Summary Of The Man; The Essential Life Of Him Had Been Slain.
Running
Bullying
Nice
The Sadness Of The Incomplete, The Sadness That Is Often Life, But Should Never Be Art.
Art
Sadness
Should
As Long As Learning Is Connected With Earning, As Long As Certain Jobs Can Only Be Reached Through Exams, So Long Must We Take The Examination System Seriously. If Another Ladder To Employment Was Contrived, Much So-called Education Would Disappear, And No One Be A Penny The Stupider.
Jobs
Long
Would Be
One's Favorite Book Is As Elusive As One's Favorite Pudding.
Book
Taste
Pudding
'oh, Poor, Poor Fellow!' Said Mrs. Elliot With A Remorse That Was Sincere, Though Her Congratulations Would Not Have Been.
Sympathy
Congratulations
Sincere
If God Could Tell The Story Of The Universe, The Universe Would Become Fictitious.
Stories
Ifs
Universe
I Believe We Shall Come To Care About People Less And Less, Helen. The More People One Knows, The Easier It Becomes To Replace Them. It's One Of The Curses Of London. I Quite Expect To End My Life Caring Most For A Place.
Believe
Caring
People
One Person With Passion Is Better Than Forty People Merely Interested.
Football
Motivation
Passion
If Only The Sense Of Actuality Can Be Lulled-and It Sleeps For Ever In Most Historians-there Is No Passion That Cannot Be Gratified In The Past.
Passion
Sleep
Past
Take An Old Man's Word; There's Nothing Worse Than A Muddle In All The World. It Is Easy To Face Death And Fate, And The Things That Sound So Dreadful. It Is On My Muddles That I Look Back With Horror - On The Things That I Might Have Avoided. We Can Help One Another But Little. I Used To Think I Could Teach Young People The Whole Of Life, But I Know Better Now, And All My Teaching Of George Has Come Down To This: Beware Of Muddle.
Teaching
Fate
Men
Roger Fry Is Painting Me. It Is Too Like Me At Present, But He Is Confident He Will Be Able To Alter That. Post-impressionism Is At Present Confined To My Lower Lip... And To My Chin.
Portraiture
Roger
Able
Naked I Came Into The World, Naked I Shall Go Out Of It! And A Very Good Thing Too, For It Reminds Me That I Am Naked Under My Shirt, Whatever Its Colour.
Justice
Naked
World
I Have Always Found Writing Pleasant And Don't Understand What People Mean By 'throes Of Creation.'
Writing
Mean
People
I Would Rather Be A Coward Than Brave Because People Hurt You When You Are Brave.
Hurt
Fear
People
Life's Very Difficult And Full Of Surprises. At All Events, I've Got As Far As That. To Be Humble And Kind, To Go Straight Ahead, To Love People Rather Than Pity Them, To Remember The Submerged - Well, One Can't Do All These Things At Once, Worse Luck, Because They're So Contradictory. It's Then That Proportion Comes In - To Live By Proportion. Don't Begin With Proportion. Only Prigs Do That. Let Proportion Come In As A Last Resource, When The Better Things Have Failed.
Humble
People
Luck
Passion Does Not Blind. No. Passion Is Sanity, And The Woman You Love, She Is The Only Person You Will Ever Really Understand.
Passion
Doe
Sanity
Hardship Is Vanishing, But So Is Style, And The Two Are More Closely Connected Than The Present Generation Supposes.
Two
Style
Generations
In Time, Mr Hall, One Gets To Recognize That Sneer, That Hardness, For Fornication Extends Far Beyond The Actual Deed. Were It A Deed Only, I For One Would Not Hold It Anathema. But When The Nations Went A Whoring They Invariably Ended By Denying God, I Think, And Until All Sexual Irregularities And Not Some Of Them Are Penal The Church Will Never Reconquer England.
Atheist
Thinking
Church
Faith, To My Mind, Is A Stiffening Process, A Sort Of Mental Starch, Which Ought To Be Applied As Sparingly As Possible. I Dislike The Stuff. I Do Not Believe In It, For Its Own Sake, At All... My Lawgivers Are Erasmus And Montaigne, Not Moses And St Paul. My Temple Stands Not Upon Mount Moriah But In The Elysian Field Where Even The Immoral Are Admitted. My Motto Is 'lord, I Disbelieve - Help Thou My Unbelief.
Atheist
Believe
Mind
I Have No Mystic Faith In The People. I Have In The Individual.
People
Literature
Individual
All Invitations Must Proceed From Heaven Perhaps; Perhaps It Is Futile For Men To Initiate Their Own Unity, They Do But Widen The Gulfs Between Them By The Attempt.
Men
Heaven
Unity
I Love Love I Love Being In Love I Don't Care What It Does To Me The Format, In "inches And Failing". Masood, A Young Lady Has Fallen In Love With Me-at Least So I Judge From Her Letters. Awkward Is It Not-awkward And Surprising. You Would Be Flattered And Twirl Your Moustache, But I Am Merely Uncomfortable. I Wish She Would Stop, As She Is Very Nice, And I Enjoyed Being Friends. What An Ill Constructed World This Is! Love Is Always Being Given Where It Is Not Required.
Life
Nice
Being In Love
It Isn't Possible To Love And To Part.
Romantic
Possible Love
Room With A View
Neanderthal Man Listened To Stories, If One May Judge By The Shape Of His Skull.
Men
Skulls
Judging
Have You Ever Noticed That There Are People Who Do Things Which Are Most Indelicate, And Yet At The Same Time - Beautiful?
Beautiful
People
Room With A View
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.
Men
Two
Play
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.
Life
America
Interesting
Are Not Beauty And Delicacy The Same?
Delicacy
Room With A View
In The Novel We Can Know People Perfectly, And, Apart From The General Pleasure Of Reading, We Can Find Here A Compensation For Their Dimness In Life.
Reading
People
Understanding
The Book [ A Passage To India ] Shows Signs Of Fatigue And Disillusionment; But It Has Chapters Of Clear And Triumphant Beauty, And Above All It Makes Us Wonder, What Will He Write Next?
Book
Writing
India
The English Countryside, Its Growth And Its Destruction, Is A Genuine And Tragic Theme.
Growth
Literature
Destruction
It Is Not That The Englishman Can't Feel-it Is That He Is Afraid To Feel. He Has Been Taught At His Public School That Feeling Is Bad Form. He Must Not Express Great Joy Or Sorrow, Or Even Open His Mouth Too Wide When He Talks-his Pipe Might Fall Out If He Did.
Fall
School
Justice
Those Who Search For Truth Are Too Conscious Of The Maze To Be Hard On Others...
Mazes
Conscious
Hard
He Had Shown Her All The Workings Of His Soul, Mistaking This For Love.
Inspirational
Inspiring
Soul
Self-pity? I See No Moral Objections To It, The Smell Drives People Away, But That's A Practical Objection, And Occasionally An Advantage.
Self
Smell
People
A Critic Has No Right To The Narrowness Which Is The Frequent Prerogative Of The Creative Artist.
Artist
Creative
Criticism
What Is Wonderful About Great Literature Is That It Transforms The Man Who Reads It Towards The Condition Of The Man Who Wrote.
Reading
Men
Literature
It's Miles Worse For You Than That; I'm In Love With Your Gamekeeper.
Miles
One Minute. You Know Nothing About Him. He Probably Has His Own Joys And Interests- Wife, Children, Snug Little Home. That's Where We Practical Fellows'- He Smiled-'are More Tolerant Than You Intellectuals. We Live And Let Live, And Assume That Things Are Jogging On Fairly Well Elsewhere, And That The Ordinary Plain Man May Be Trusted To Look After His Own Affairs.
Children
Home
Men
While Her Lips Talked Culture, Her Heart Was Planning To Invite Him To Tea
Heart
Tea
Culture
Only A Writer Who Has The Sense Of Evil Can Make Goodness Readable.
Evil
Literature
Goodness
History Develops, Art Stands Still.
Art
History
Literature
Our Easiest Approach To A Definition Of Any Aspect Of Fiction Is Always By Considering The Sort Of Demand It Makes On The Reader. Curiosity For The Story, Human Feelings And A Sense Of Value For The Characters, Intelligence And Memory For The Plot. What Does Fantasy Ask Of Us? It Asks Us To Pay Something Extra.
Memories
Character
Empathy
The Middle Age Of Buggers Is Not To Be Contemplated Without Horror.
Age
Horror
Middle
Reformers Who Are Obsessed With Purity And Cannot See That Their Obsession Is Impure.
Obsession
Purity
Obsessed
I'm A Holy Man Minus The Holiness. Hand That On To Your Three Spies, And Tell Them To Put It In Their Pipes.
Men
Hands
Spy
I Don't Know What To Think Until I See What I've Said.
Thinking
Said
Knows
He Educated Maurice, Or Rather His Spirit Educated Maurice's Spirit, For They Themselves Became Equal. Neither Thought "am I Led; Am I Leading?" Love Had Caught Him Out Of Triviality And Maurice Out Of Bewilderment In Order That Two Imperfect Souls Might Touch Perfection.
Order
Two
Perfection
Very Notable Was His Distinction Between Coarseness And Vulgarity, Coarseness, Revealing Something; Vulgarity, Concealing Something.
Vulgarity Is
Revealing Something
Literature
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.
Romance
Pairs
Unexpected
Do We Find Happiness So Often That We Should Turn It Off The Box When It Happens To Sit There?
Finding Happiness
Should
Boxes
All That Is Observable In A Man-that Is To Say His Actions And Such Of His Spiritual Existence As Can Be Deduced From His Actions-falls Into The Domain Of History.
Spiritual
Fall
Men
Happiness In The Ordinary Sense Is Not What One Needs In Life, Though One Is Right To Aim At It. The True Satisfaction Is To Come Through, And See Those Whom One Lives Come Through.
Life
Ordinary
Needs
When We Were Only Acquaintances, You Let Me Be Myself, But Now You're Always Protecting Me... I Won't Be Protected. I Will Choose For Myself What Is Ladylike And Right. To Shield Me Is An Insult. Can't I Be Trusted To Face The Truth But I Must Get It Second-hand Through You? A Woman's Place!
Hands
Shields
Faces
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.
Character
Vanity
Changed
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.
Memories
Stupid
People
Mistrust All Enterprises That Require New Clothes.
Fashion
Clothes
Deep Life
It Was Unbearable, And He Thought Again, 'how Unhappy I Am!' And Became Happier.
Unhappy
Unbearable
The Only Books That Influence Us Are Those For Which We Are Ready, And Which Have Gone A Little Farther Down Our Particular Path Than We Have Yet Got Ourselves.
Book
Gone
Littles
She Must Be Assured That It Is Not A Criminal Offense To Love At First Sight.
Sight
Criminals
Firsts
Axiom : Novel Must Have Either One Living Character Or A Perfect Pattern: Fails Otherwise.
Character
Perfect
Patterns
The Test Of A Round Character Is Whether It Is Capable Of Surprising In A Convincing Way. If It Never Surprises It Is Flat. Flat Characters ... In Their Purest Form ... Are Constructed Round A Single Idea Or Quality; When There Is More Than One Factor To Them, We Get The Beginning Of The Curve Toward The Round. The Really Flat Character Can Be Experessed In One Sentence Such As, "i Will Never Desert Mr Micawber." There Is Mrs Micawber - She Says She Won't Desert Mr Micawber; She Doesn't, And There She Is.
Character
Curves
Ideas
It Is Thus, If There Is Any Rule, That We Ought To Die--neither As Victim Nor As Fanatic, But As The Seafarer Who Can Greet With An Equal Eye The Deep That He Is Entering, And The Shore That He Must Leave.
Eye
Entering
Victim
You Told Me Once That We Shall Be Judged By Our Intentions, Not By Our Accomplishments. I Thought It A Grand Remark. But We Must Intend To Accomplish - Not Sit Intending On A Chair.
Accomplishment
Intention
Chairs
They Had Nothing In Common But The English Language.
Common
Language
English Language
She Had Been So Wicked That In All Her Life She Had Done Only One Good Deed-given An Onion To A Beggar. So She Went To Hell. As She Lay In Torment She Saw The Onion, Lowered Down From Heaven By An Angel. She Caught Hold Of It. He Began To Pull Her Up. The Other Damned Saw What Was Happening And Caught Hold Of It Too. She Was Indignant And Cried, "let Go-it's My Onion," And As Soon As She Said, "my Onion," The Stalk Broke And She Fell Back Into The Flames.
Letting Go
Angel
Flames
She Would Only Point Out The Salvation That Was Latent In His Own Soul, And In The Soul Of Every Man. Only Connect! That Was The Whole Of Her Sermon. Only Connect The Prose And The Passion, And Both Will Be Exalted, And Human Love Will Be Seen At Its Height. Live In Fragments No Longer. Only Connect, And The Beast And The Monk, Robbed Of The Isolation That Is Life To Either, Will Die.
Love
Passion
Men
The People I Admire Most Are Those Who Are Sensitive And Want To Create Something Or Discover Something, And Do Not See Life In Terms Of Power.
People
Want
Sensitive
This Desire To Govern A Woman -- It Lies Very Deep, And Men And Women Must Fight It Together.... But I Do Love You Surely In A Better Way Then He Does." He Thought. "yes -- Really In A Better Way. I Want You To Have Your Own Thoughts Even When I Hold You In My Arms.
Lying
Love You
Fighting
Before The Civil War, Pottibakia Was A Normal Member Of The Comity Of Nations. She Erected Tariff Walls, Broke Treaties, Persecuted Minorities, Obstructed At Conferences Unless She Was Convinced There Was No Danger Of A Satisfactory Solution; Then She Strained Every Nerve In The Cause Of Peace.
Wall
War
Nerves
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.
Art
Men
Creative
I Am A Jane Austenite, And Therefore Slightly Imbecile About Jane Austen. My Fatuous Expression, And Airs Of Personal Immunity-how Ill They Sit On The Face, Say,of A Stevensonian! But Jane Austen Is So Different. She Is My Favourite Author! I Read And Reread, The Mouth Open And The Mind Closed. Shut Up In Measureless Content, I Greet Her By The Name Of Most Kind Hostess, While Criticism Slumbers.
Air
Expression
Names
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.
Believe
Essence
Romance
You Talk As If A God Had Made The Machine," Cried The Other. "i Believe That You Pray To It When You Are Unhappy. Men Made It, Do Not Forget That. Great Men, But Men. The Machine Is Much, But Not Everything.
Believe
Men
Unhappy
England Still Waits For The Supreme Moment Of Her Literature--for The Great Poet Who Shall Voice Her, Or, Better Still, For The Thousand Little Poets Whose Voices Shall Pass Into Our Common Talk.
Voice
Poetry
Waiting
Love And Understand The Italians, For The People Are More Marvellous Than The Land.
Land
People
Literature
“it Is Fate That I Am Here,” Persisted George. “but You Can Call It Italy If It Makes You Less Unhappy.”
Fate
Unhappy
Room With A View
Their Quarrel Was No More Surprising Than Are Most Quarrels — Inevitable At The Time, Incredible Afterwards.
Peace
War
Incredibles
Let Yourself Go. Pull Out From The Depths Those Thoughts That You Do Not Understand, And Spread Them Out In The Sunlight And Know The Meaning Of Them.
Inspirational
Life
Beautiful
The Four Characteristics Of Humanism Are Curiosity, A Free Mind, Belief In Good Taste, And Belief In The Human Race.
Race
Curiosity
Mind
But The Body Is Deeper Than The Soul And Its Secrets Inscrutable.
Get Well
Soul
Secret
One Is Certain Of Nothing But The Truth Of One's Own Emotions.
History
Emotion
Certain
When Love Flies It Is Remembered Not As Love But As Something Else.
Remembered
English Literature Is A Flying Fish.
Fishing
Flying
Literature
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.
Art
Taken
Men
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. We Can Recover Self-confidence By Snubbing The Dead.
Self Confidence
History
Office
So, Two Cheers For Democracy: One Because It Admits Variety And Two Because It Permits Criticism.
Cheer
Democracies Have
Two
There's Nothing Like A Debate To Teach One Quickness. I Often Wish I Had Gone In For Them When I Was A Youngster. It Would Have Helped Me No End.
Wish
Gone
Debate
Don't Go Fighting Against The Spring.
Spring
Fighting
One Has Two Duties - To Be Worried And Not To Be Worried.
Life
Two
Worried
Death Destroys A Man, But The Idea Of Death Saves Him.
Death
Men
Ideas
England Has Always Been Disinclined To Accept Human Nature.
Literature
England
Human Nature
A Sentence Begins Quite Simply, Then It Undulates And Expands, Parentheses Intervene Like Quick-set Hedges, The Flowers Of Comparison Bloom, And Three Fields Off, Like A Wounded Partridge, Crouches The Principal Verb, Making One Wonder As One Picks It Up, Poor Little Thing, Whether After All It Was Worth Such A Tramp, So Many Guns, And Such Expensive Dogs, And What, After All, Is Its Relation To The Main Subject, Potted So Gaily Half A Page Back, And Proving Finally To Have Been In The Accusative Case.
Dog
Flower
Gun
In The Creative State A Man Is Taken Out Of Himself.
Inspirational
Taken
Creativity
But After All, What Have We To Do With Taverns? Real Menace Belongs To The Drawing-room.
Real
Class
Drawing
Either Life Entails Courage, Or It Ceases To Be Life.
Courage
Literature
Be Courageous
Humility Is A Quality For Which I Have Only A Limited Admiration. In Many Phases Of Life It Is A Great Mistake And Degenerates Into Defensiveness Or Hypocrisy.
Mistake
Humility
Hypocrisy
They Cared For No One, They Were Outside Humanity, And Death, Had It Come, Would Only Have Continued Their Pursuit Of A Retreating Horizon.
Humanity
Horizon
Pursuit
The Kingdom Of Music Is Not The Kingdom Of This World; It Will Accept Those Whom Breeding And Intellect And Culture Have Alike Rejected.
Culture
World
Kingdoms
Charm, In Most Men And Nearly All Women, Is A Decoration.
Men
Literature
Charm
A Happy Ending Was Imperative. I Shouldn't Have Bothered To Write Otherwise. I Was Determined That In Fiction Anyway Two Men Should Fall In Love And Remain In It For The Ever And Ever That Fiction Allows, And In This Sense, Maurice And Alec Still Roam The Greenwood.
Falling In Love
Writing
Men
When Love Flies It Is Remembered Not As Love But As Something Else. Blessed Are The Uneducated, Who Forget It Entirely, And Are Never Conscious Of Folly Or Pruriency In The Past, Of Long Aimless Conversations.
Blessed
Past
Long
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.
Character
Fighting
Artist
My Law-givers Are Erasmus And Montaigne, Not Moses And St Paul.
Law
Erasmus
Moses
Paganism Is Infectious, More Infectious Than Diphtheria Or Piety.
Literature
Paganism
Piety
Let Us Think Of People As Starting Life With An Experience They Forget And Ending It With One Which They Anticipate But Cannot Understand.
Thinking
People
Forget
Science Explained People, But Could Not Understand Them. After Long Centuries Among The Bones And Muscles It Might Be Advancing To Knowledge Of The Nerves, But This Would Never Give Understanding
Knowledge
Science
Long
Intuition Attracts Those Who Wish To Be Spiritual Without Any Bother, Because It Promises A Heaven Where The Intuitions Of Others Can Be Ignored.
Spiritual
Heaven
Promise
This Solitude Opressed Her; She Was Accustomed To Have Her Thoughts Confirmed By Others Or, At All Events, Contradicted; It Was Too Dreadful Not To Know Whether She Was Thinking Right Or Wrong.
Thinking
Solitude
Events
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