E. M. Forster Quotes

Very notable was his distinction between coarseness and vulgarity, coarseness, revealing something; vulgarity, concealing something.

Life is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.

Some reviews give pain. This is regrettable, but no author has the right to whine. He was not obliged to be an author. He invited publicity, and he must take the publicity that comes along.

I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it — and I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil. I don't die — I don't fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there.

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

But this time I'm not to blame; I want you to believe that. I simply slipped into those violets. No, I want to be really truthful. I am a little to blame. The sky, you know, was gold, and the ground all blue, and for a moment he looked like some one in a book.

The strong are so stupid.

Like all her friends, I miss her greatly...But...I am sure there is no case for lamentation...Virginia Woolf got through an immense amount of work, she gave acute pleasure in new ways, she pushed the light of the English language a little further against darkness. Those are facts.

Solidity, caution, integrity, efficiency. Lack of imagination, hypocrisy. These qualities characterize the middle classes in everycountry, but in England they are national characteristics.

At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.

I am a Jane Austenite, and therefore slightly imbecile about Jane Austen. My fatuous expression, and airs of personal immunity-how ill they sit on the face, say,of a Stevensonian! But Jane Austen is so different. She is my favourite author! I read and reread, the mouth open and the mind closed. Shut up in measureless content, I greet her by the name of most kind hostess, while criticism slumbers.

Italy is such a delightful place to live in if you happen to be a man. There one may enjoy that exquisite luxury of Socialism--that true Socialism which is based not on equality of income or character, but on the equality of manners. In the democracy of the caffè or the street the great question of our life has been solved, and the brotherhood of man is a reality. But it is accomplished at the expense of the sisterhood of women.

As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through exams, so long must we take the examination system seriously. If another ladder to employment was contrived, much so-called education would disappear, and no one be a penny the stupider.

Nonsense and beauty have close connections.

For 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.

Those who prepared for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy.

It was unbearable, and he thought again, 'How unhappy I am!' and became happier.

I don't know what to think until I see what I've said.

The present flowed by them like a stream. The tree rustled. It had made music before they were born, and would continue after their deaths, but its song was of the moment. The moment had passed. The tree rustled again. Their senses were sharpened, and they seemed to apprehend life. Life passed. The tree rustled again.

How do I know what I have to say wntil I see what I have said?

One's favorite book is as elusive as one's favorite pudding.

...though nothing is damaged, everything is changed.

Passion should believe itself irresistible. It should forget civility and consideration and all the other curses of a refined nature. Above all, it should never ask for leave where there is a right of way.

Oxford is Oxford: not a mere receptacle for youth, like Cambridge. Perhaps it wants its inmates to love it rather than to love one another.

In the light of her son's comment she reconsidered the scene at the mosque, to see whose impression was correct. Yes it could be worked into quite an unpleasant scene. The doctor had begun by bullying her, had said Mrs Callendar was nice, and then - finding the ground safe - had changed; he had alternately whined over his grievances and patronized her, had run a dozen ways in a single sentence, had been unreliable, inquisitive, vain. Yes, it was all true, but how false as a summary of the man; the essential life of him had been slain.

They had nothing in common but the English language.

No one is more triumphant than the man who chooses a worthy subject and masters all its facts.

Neanderthal man listened to stories, if one may judge by the shape of his skull. The primitive audience was an audience of shock-heads, gaping around the camp-fire, fatigued with contending against the mammoth or wooly-rhinoceros, and only kept awake by suspense. What would happen next? The novelist droned on, and as soon as the audience guessed what happened next, they either fell asleep or killed him.

The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty.

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.

One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.

There's never any great risk as long as you have money.

Aziz winked at him slowly and said: “...There are many ways of being a man; mine is to express what is deepest in my heart.

Just as words have two functions - information and creation - so each human mind has two personalities, one on the surface, one deeper down. The upper personality... is conscious and alert... The lower personality is a... perfect fool, but without it there is no literature.

I'd far rather leave a thought behind me than a child. Other people can have children.

One has two duties - to be worried and not to be worried.

Tolerance is just a makeshift, suitable for an overcrowded and overheated planet. It carries on when love gives out, and love generally gives out as soon as we move away from our home and our friends.

He stretched out his hands as he sang, sadly, because all beauty is sad…The poem had done no ‘good’ to anyone, but it was a passing reminder, a breath from the divine lips of beauty, a nightingale between two worlds of dust. Less explicit than the call to Krishna, it voiced our loneliness nevertheless, our isolation, our need for the Friend who never comes yet is not entirely disproved.

How can I know what I think till I see what I say?

He had shown her all the workings of his soul, mistaking this for love.

Passion does not blind. No. Passion is sanity, and the woman you love, she is the only person you will ever really understand.

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

I am an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.

It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness, to think that a thousand square miles are a thousand times more wonderful than one square mile, and that a million square miles are almost the same as heaven.

He educated Maurice, or rather his spirit educated Maurice's spirit, for they themselves became equal. Neither thought "Am I led; am I leading?" Love had caught him out of triviality and Maurice out of bewilderment in order that two imperfect souls might touch perfection.

It is pleasant to be transferred from an office where one is afraid of a sergeant-major into an office where one can intimidate generals, and perhaps this is why history is so attractive to the more timid among us. We can recover self-confidence by snubbing the dead.

There is much good luck in the world, but it is luck. We are none of us safe. We are children, playing or quarrelling on the line.