E. M. Forster Quotes

What kind of guilt comes from being true to yourself but not to others?. As we have seen, being true to yourself may at times intrinsically and necessarily be in conflict with being true to others.

Every one of us ... knows better than he practices, and recognizes a better law than he obeys.

The prevarication and white lies which a mind that keeps itself ambitiously pure is as uneasy under as a great artist under the false touches that no eye detects but his own, are worn as lightly as mere trimmings when once the actions have become a lie.

Be who you are. If you spend all of your time worrying about how people view you, you will not be either faithful to yourself or effective in what you're trying to do.

Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignation with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. One shuffles flashily but in vain through one's marked cards- the kindness done for the wrong reason, the apparent triumph which involved no real effort, the seemingly heroic act into which one had been shamed.

We are born perfect, and we will die perfect. The problem is that we create that character in our story that we pretend to be, or that we want to be, and we cannot hide that from ourselves. We know that we are pretending to be what we are not in the name of perfection.

I don't know a soul who doesn't maintain two separate lists of doctrines the ones that they believe that they believe; and the ones that they actually try to live by.

If you do not live what you believe, you will end up believing what you live.

Patty knew, in her heart, that he was wrong in his impression of her. And the mistake she went to go on to make, the really big life mistake, was to go along with Walter's version of her in spite of knowing that it wasn't right. He seemed so certain of her goodness that eventually he wore her down.

I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.

The so-called new morality is too often the old immorality condoned.

We are lying to ourselves and to each other. Lying about what? I don't care if we're lying. I am a bad person. I don't care. I don't care what you are.

Principles do not mainly influence even the principled; we talk on principle, but we act on interest.

To sell oneself for thirty pieces of silver is an honest transaction; but to sell oneself to one s own conscience is to abandon mankind.

One’s concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one’s personal interest in the issue.

I am an idealist. I often feel I would like to be an artist in an ivory tower. Yet it is imperative that I speak to people, so I must desert that ivory tower. To do this, I am a journalist - a photojournalist. But I am always torn between the attitude of the journalist, who is a recorder of facts, and the artist, who is often necessarily at odds with the facts. My principle concern is for honesty, above all honesty with myself.

Hypocrisy is bad, but it's not the worst vice in the world. If I declared “murder is wrong” and then killed somebody, I would hope that the top count against me would be homicide, not hypocrisy. Liberal elites ' particularly in Hollywood ' believe that hypocrisy is the gravest sin in the world, which is why they advocate their own lifestyles for the entire world: Sleep with whomever you want, listen to your own instincts, be true to yourself, blah, blah, blah. Our fear of hypocrisy is forcing us to live in a world where gluttons are fine, so long as they champion gluttony.

Unless Christianity is wholly false, the perception of ourselves which we have in moments of shame must be the only true one.

There are many who have grave scruples about deceiving but think it as nothing to deceive themselves.

What moralist can deny that well-bred and vicious people are much more agreeable than their virtuous counterparts? Having crimes to atone for, they provisionally solicit indulgence by showing leniency toward the defects of their judges. Thus they pass for excellent folk.

Essentially, I'm a very real person; good and bad. And the public image is one of being very good, I suppose. But one of the reasons I'm attracted to people like Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Christ, to pacifism, is because naturally, I'm the guy that would not turn the other cheek - but, when people see you're attracted to that, they think you are that.

Remember, we can judge better by the conduct of people towards others than by their manner towards ourselves.

Whenever you experience stress of any kind, look into yourself and ask, In what way am I compromising my innermost values in this situation?

Be true to yourself, and stick with who you are through thick and thin without letting anyone dilute your essence.

To succeed in life requires a total inability to do anything that makes you uncomfortable when you look at yourself in the mirror.