M. Forster
M. Forster
character fighting artist
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.
age growing emotion
Growing old is an emotion which comes over us at almost any age; I had it myself between the ages of 25 and 30.
men trying ifs
Man can learn everything if he will but try.
mistake earth life-is
Excuse my mistakes, realize my limitations. Life is not easy as we know it on the earth.
may i-may-not-be be-you
When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.
changed
...though nothing is damaged, everything is changed.
long risk great-risk
There's never any great risk as long as you have money.
girl men room-with-a-view
Men were not gods after all, but as human and as clumsy as girls.
believe men unhappy
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.
mind atheism half
Sudden conversion ... is particularly attractive to the half-baked mind.
book want language
Ah, but you see, I didn't want to be fair.
jobs long would-be
As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through exams, so long must we take this examination system seriously. If another ladder to employment was contrived, much so-called education would disappear, and no one would be a penny the stupider.
character curves ideas
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.
running character long
Characters must not brood too long. They must not waste time running up and down ladders in their own insides.