"The test of a round character is whether……" — E. M. Forster
"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."
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E. M. Forster
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350 Quotes by E. M. Forster
E. M. Forster has 350 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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Naked I came into the world, naked I shall go out of it! And a very good thing too, for…
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It is not that the Englishman can't feel-it is that he is afraid to feel. He has been taught at…
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Our final experience, like our first, is conjectural. We move between two darkness's.
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Failure or success seems to have been allotted to men by their stars. But they retain the power of wriggling,…
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The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death." "We must be willing to let…
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As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through exams, so…
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The idea that nations should love one another, or that business concerns or marketing boards should love one another, or…
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Towns are excrescences, gray fluxions, where men, hurrying to find one another, have lost themselves.
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Neanderthal man listened to stories, if one may judge by the shape of his skull. The primitive audience was an…
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A novelist can shift view-point if it comes off. ... Indeed, this power to expand and contract perception (of which…
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This element of surprise or mystery - the detective element as it is sometimes rather emptily called - is of…
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Characters must not brood too long. They must not waste time running up and down ladders in their own insides.
See all 350 quotes by E. M. Forster »
More Beginning Quotes
This quote is filed under Beginning Quotes,
one of 4,628 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:
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No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our…
— Hannah Arendt
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Our tradition of political thought had its definite beginning in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. I believe it came…
— Hannah Arendt
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A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole…
— Aristotle
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The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not…
— Aristotle
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But human beings fall easily into despair, and from the very beginning we invented stories that enabled us to place…
— Karen Armstrong
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When the British came to Ibo land, for instance, at the beginning of the 20th century, and defeated the men…
— Chinua Achebe
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The beginning of Canadian cultural nationalism was not 'Am I really that oppressed?' but 'Am I really that boring?'
— Margaret Atwood
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Beauty is about perception, not about make-up. I think the beginning of all beauty is knowing and liking oneself. You…
— Kevyn Aucoin
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The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.
— Saint Augustine
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It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.
— Marcus Aurelius
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Begin - to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished.
— Marcus Aurelius
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India saw from the beginning, and, even in her ages of reason and her age of increasing ignorance, she never…
— Sri Aurobindo
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