E. M. Forster Quotes

Life' wrote a friend of mine, 'is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.

This is Ahab, that's Jezebel," said Evie, who was one of those who name animals after the less successful characters of Old Testament history.

Sensual and spiritual are not easy words to use; that there are, perhaps, not two
Aphrodites, but one Aphrodite with a Janus face.

I suppose I shall have to live now

The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul.

...for literature had always been a solace for him, something that the ugliness of facts could not spoil.

She thought him invertebrate and conventional.

A thousand little civilities create tenderness in time.

Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.

Don't be mysterious; there isn't the time.

But they did not chatter much, for the boy, when he liked a person, would as soon sit silent in his company as speak.

To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it.

My dear, I am worried about you. It seems to me" - dreamily; she was not alarmed - "that you are in a muddle.

At the side of the everlasting why, is a yes, and a yes, and a yes.

The sadness of the incomplete, the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art.

Though nothing is damaged, everything is changed.

The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then queen died of grief is a plot.

For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better.

And he felt dubious and discontented suddenly, and wondered whether he was really and truly successful as a human being.

Her excitement grew as she tried to cut the rope that fastened Leonard to the earth. Woven of bitter experience, it resisted her.

Love was an emotion through which you occasionally enjoyed yourself. It could not do things.

A novel must give a sense of permanence as well as a sense of life.

But they to him were denizens of Romance, who must keep to the corner he had assigned them, pictures that must not walk out of their frames.

I'm a holy man minus the holiness. Hand that on to your three spies, and tell them to put it in their pipes.

Unless we remember we cannot understand

How do I know what I think until I see what I say?

Not only in sex, but in all things men have moved blindly, have evolved out of slime to dissolve into it when this accident of consequences is over.

In the novel we can know people perfectly, and, apart from the general pleasure of reading, we can find here a compensation for their dimness in life.

At Oxford he learned that the importance of human beings has been vastly over rated by specialists.

him who standeth, take heed lest he fall.

The sort of poetry I seek resides in objects man can't touch.

True socialism is based not on equality of income or character, but on the equality of manners.

At the moment they vanished they were everywhere, the cool benediction of the night descended, the stars sparkled, and the whole universe was a hill.

I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.

She loved him with too clear a vision to fear his cloudiness

I hated the idleness, the stupidity, the respectability, the petty unselfishness.

The woman who can't influence her husband to vote the way she wants ought to be ashamed of herself.

Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wishes to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time.

I am an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.

She only felt that the candle would burn better, the packing go easier, the world be happier, if she could give and receive some human love.

Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there?

She grew more and more vexed with his dignified behavior. By a cruel irony, she was drawing out what was best in his disposition.

She was as bored as her brother would have been, and had not his gift of listening beneath words.

Maurice was scandalized, horrified. He was shocked to the bottom of his suburban soul....

Books have to be read it is the only way of discovering what they contain.

Don't believe those lies about intellectual people. They're only written to soothe the majority.

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.

Words deserted him immediately. He could only speak when he was not asked to.

Oh, the English! They are always thinking of tea. They carry it by the kilogram, and they are so clumsy that they always pack it at the top.

Yes, oh dear, yes, the novel tells a story.

Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.

They cared for no one, they were outside humanity, and death, had it come, would only have continued their pursuit of a retreating horizon.

What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?

You can do what you like, but the outcome will be the same.

Maurice hated cricket. It demanded a snickety neatness he could not supply.

The past is devoid of meaning like the present, and a refuge for cowards.

He has the merit - if it is one - of saying exactly what he means.

England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.

Independence!" was a useful cry, and always saying we have not got it.

We shan't have rain, but we shall have darkness, so let us hurry on. The darkness last night was appalling.

we may say that History develops, Art stands still

The more highly public life is organized the lower does its morality sink.

Oh, no, not likely. No one capable of tragedy could have married Mrs. Lanoline.

The English countryside, its growth and its destruction, is a genuine and tragic theme.

There are occasions when I would rather feel like a fly than a spider.

Margaret could not reply. Was he incredibly stupid, or did he understand her better than she understood herself?

A slow nature such as Maurice's appears insensitive, for it needs time even to feel.

One doesn't come to Italy for niceness," was the retort; "one comes for life. Buon giorno! Buon giorno!

Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.

If we act the truth the people who really love us are sure to come back to us in the long run

To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.

I have always found writing pleasant and don't understand what people mean by 'throes of creation.'

There are different ways of evil and I prefer mine to yours.

Chess is a forcing house where the fruits of character can ripen more fully than in life

A critic has no right to the narrowness which is the frequent prerogative of the creative artist.

An engagement is so potent a thing that sooner or later it reduces all who speak of it to this state of cheerful awe.

There's nothing like a debate to teach one quickness. I often wish I had gone in for them when I was a youngster. It would have helped me no end.

Neither memory nor anticipation is much interested in Father Time, and all dreamers, artists and lovers are partially delivered from his tyranny;

Nonsense of this type is more difficult to combat than a solid lie. It hides in rubbish heaps and moves when no one is looking.

It is devilish difficult to criticise society & also create human beings.

Science is better than sympathy, if only it is science.

Then the pernicious charm of Italy worked on her, and, instead of acquiring information, she began to be happy.

My law-givers are Erasmus and Montaigne, not Moses and St Paul.

Don't go fighting against the Spring.

He seems to see good in every one. No one would take him for a clergyman.

The old trouble: things won't fit.'
'What things?'
'The things of the universe.

If Miss Honeychurch ever takes to live as she plays, it will be very exciting
both for us and for her.

The hungry and the homeless don't care about liberty any more than they care about cultural heritage. To pretend that they do care is cant.

She strove in vain against the echoing walls of their civility.

Italy was offering her the most priceless of all possessions - her own soul.

America is rather like life. You can usually find in it what you look for. It will probably be interesting, and it is sure to be large.

Italy and London are the only places where I don't feel to exist on sufferance.

Axiom : Novel must have either one living character or a perfect pattern: fails otherwise.

For it is a serious thing to have been watched. We all radiate something curiously intimate when we believe ourselves to be alone.

No one, except Ronny, had any idea of what passed in her mind, and he only dimly, for where there is officialism every human relationship suffers.

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

Self-pity ? I see no moral objections to it, the smell drives people away, but that's a practical objection, and occasionally an advantage.

How can it be expressed in anything but itself?

Outside the arch, always there seemed another arch. And beyond the remotest echo, a silence.

I have no mystic faith in the people. I have in the individual.