Named source · 1908

A Room with a View Quotes by E. M. Forster: Context & Meanings

1 quotation linked to A Room with a View by or associated with E. M. Forster, with source notes, explanations and related topics.

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Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.

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“Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.”

E. M. Forster

Meaning & context

Forster’s narrator contrasts the clarity of describing another person’s life from outside with the confusion of recognizing one’s own desires while actually living them.

Source details

A Room with a View, Chapter XIV, Project Gutenberg #2641. The frozen catalog wording is a clause extract from the narrator’s longer sentence: “Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome ‘nerves’ or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire.” The passage concerns Lucy Honeychurch’s self-deception in fiction, not modern psychological evidence.

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