In Europe life retreats out of the cold, and exquisite fireside myths have resultedโBalder, Persephoneโbut [in India] the retreat is from the source of life, the treacherous sun, and no poetry adorns it because disillusionment cannot be beautiful. Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form, and India fails to accommodate them.
E. M. ForsterWhy children?' he asked. 'Why always children? For love to end where it begins is far more beautiful, and Nature knows it.
E. M. ForsterWhen that strange race nears the dust and is condemned as untouchable, then nature remembers the physical perfection that she accomplished elsewhere, and throws out a god-not many, but one here and there, to prove to society how little its categories impress her.
E. M. ForsterThe final test for a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define.
E. M. ForsterFor a wonderful physical tie binds the parents to the children; and - by some sad, strange irony - it does not bind us children to our parents. For if it did, if we could answer their love not with gratitude but with equal love, life would lose much of its pathos and much of its squalor, and we might be wonderfully happy.
E. M. Forster