“You confuse what's important with what's impressive.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“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.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“I am an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“Did you ever dream you had a friend, Alec? Someone to last your whole life and you his. I suppose such a thing can’t really happen outside sleep.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“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.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“After all, is not a real Hell better than a manufactured Heaven?”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“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 from Maurice
“I swear from the bottom of my heart I want to be healed. I want to be like other men, not this outcast whom nobody wants.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“There has been, is, and always will be every conceivable type of person. ”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“Words deserted him immediately. He could only speak when he was not asked to.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“I knew you read the Symposium in the vac," he said in a low voice.
Maurice felt uneasy.
"Then you understand - without me saying more - "
"How do you mean?"
Durham could not wait. People were all around them, but with eyes that had gone intensely blue he whispered, "I love you.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“I think you’re beautiful, the only beautiful person I’ve ever seen. I love your voice and everything to do with you, down to your clothes or the room you are sitting in. I adore you.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“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. . .”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“Because I say so little you think I don't feel. I care a lot.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“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.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“I was yours once 'till death if you'd cared to keep me, but I'm someone else's now - I can't hang about whining forever - and he's mine in a way that shocks you, but why don't you stop being shocked, and attend to your own happiness?”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“Nothing's the same for anyone. That's why life's this Hell, if you do a thing you're damned, and if you don't you're damned . . . .”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“Why children?' he asked. 'Why always children? For love to end where it begins is far more beautiful, and Nature knows it.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“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.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“You mean that a Frenchman could share with a friend and yet not go to prison?’
‘Share? Do you mean unite? If both are of age and avoid public indecency, certainly.’
‘Will the law ever be that in England?’
‘I doubt it. England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“They had never struggled, and only a struggle twists sentimentality and lust together into love.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“He knew that loneliness was poisoning him, so that he grew viler as well as more unhappy.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“... And now we shan't be parted no more, and that's finished.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“He had awoken too late for happiness, but not for strength, and could feel an austere joy, as of a warrior who is homeless but stands fully armed.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“They cared for no one, they were outside humanity, and death, had it come, would only have continued their pursuit of a retreating horizon.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“He was obliged however to throw over Christianity. Those who base their conduct upon what they are rather than upon what they ought to be, always must throw it over in the end . . . .”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“When love flies it is remembered not as love but as something else.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“It's miles worse for you than that; I'm in love with your gamekeeper.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“A slow nature such as Maurice's appears insensitive, for it needs time even to feel.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from Maurice
“That was a sauna parlor, there, where I found you," the baker said. "They'll just think you were working the late shift."
Gaia was baffled. "A sauna parlor?"
She saw the baker and his wife hesitate.
The girl clarified in her open, childish voice. "He means it's a brothel."
The baked clapped a hand to his forehead.
"What?" the girl said. "It's a very discreet, high-class brothel.”
― Caragh M. O'Brien, quote from Birthmarked
“A time for every occupation under heaven. A time for giving birth, a time for dying; a time for planting, a time for uprooting what has been planted; a time for tears, a time for laughter; a time for mourning, a time for dancing; a time for searching, a time for losing; a time for loving, a time for hating.”
― Ben Sherwood, quote from The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud
“There was no one clear point of loss. It happened over and over again in a thousand small ways and the only truth there was to learn was that there was no getting used to it.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from State of Wonder
“Your hair smells like wind, did you know that?"
Yep, me and Tucker, smelling each other.”
― Cynthia Hand, quote from Hallowed
“You know when you've got nothing in particular to do, nothing to stay awake for? When your life is just routine and it doesn't feel like it belongs to you, how you feel tired and listless and everything seems like too much effort?
Well, it's like that, but it's much worse, because everything is much worse these days. Everything that's bad is worse, believe me. There are whole Neighborhoods out there where no one has anything to do all their lives. They're born, and from the moment they hit the table, there's nothing to do. They clamber to their feet occasionally, realize there's nothing to do and sit down again. They grow up, and there's nothing to do; they grow up, and there's still nothing. They spend their whole lives indoors, in armchairs, in bed, wondering who they are.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, quote from Only Forward
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