#i

I sometimes wonder whether the act of surrender is not one of the greatest of all - the highest. It is one of the [most] difficult of all... You see it's so immensely complicated. It needs real humility and at the same time, an absolute belief in one's own essential freedom. It is an act of faith. At the last moments, like all great acts, it is pure risk. This is true for me as a human being and as a writer. Dear Heaven, how hard it is to let go - to step into the blue. And yet one's creative life depends on it and one desires to do nothing else. ↗

— Katherine Mansfield

#faith #freedom #humility #risk #surrender

But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to merge in something else. ↗

— E. M. Forster

#causes #disappear #else #identifiable #india

What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote. ↗

— E. M. Forster

#condition #great #great literature #literature #man

No man can be an agnostic who has a sense of humour. ↗

— E. M. Forster

#humour #man #sense #who

Beauty ought to look a little surprised: it is the emotion that best suits her face. The beauty who does not look surprised, who accepts her position as her due - she reminds us too much of a prima donna. ↗

— E. M. Forster

#beauty #best #does #donna #due

England has always been disinclined to accept human nature. ↗

— E. M. Forster

#always #been #disinclined #england #human

Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice. ↗

— E. M. Forster

#chronicle #easy #life #practice

Nonsense and beauty have close connections. ↗

— E. M. Forster

#close #connections #nonsense

Paganism is infectious, more infectious than diphtheria or piety. ↗

— E. M. Forster

#more #paganism #piety #than

People have their own deaths as well as their own lives, and even if there is nothing beyond death, we shall differ in our nothingness. ↗

— E. M. Forster

#death #deaths #differ #even #lives