E. M. Forster Quotes & Sayings

Give me life, with its struggles and victories, with its failures and hatreds, with its deep moral meaning and its unknown goal! — E. M. Forster

My conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it. — E. M. Forster

The affections are more reticent than the passions, and their expression more subtle. — E. M. Forster

When real things are so wonderful, what is the point of pretending? — E. M. Forster

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. — E. M. Forster

Let her go to Italy!" he cried. "Let her meddle with what she doesn't understand! — E. M. Forster

It's not what people do to you, but what they mean, that hurts. — E. M. Forster

She hated war and liked soldiers - it was one of her amiable inconsistencies. — E. M. Forster

Whom does Love concern beyond the beloved and the lover? Yet his impact deluges a hundred shores. — E. M. Forster

Remember that it's only by going off the track that you get to know the country...And don't, let me beg you, go with that awful tourist idea that Italy's only a museum of antiquities and art. Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvelous than the land. — E. M. Forster

He never even thought of tenderness and emotion; his considerations about Durham remained cold. Durham didn't dislike him, he was sure. That was all he wanted. One thing at a time. He didn't so much as have hopes, for hope distracts, and he had a great deal to see to. — E. M. Forster

The air was white, and when they alighted it tasted like cold pennies. At — E. M. Forster

Man has to pick up his functions as he goes along. — E. M. Forster

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

In daily life we never understand each other, neither complete clairvoyance nor complete confessional exists. We know each other approximately, by external signs, and these serve well enough as a basis for society and even for intimacy. But people in a novel can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist wishes; their inner as well as their outer life can be exposed. And this is why they often seem more definite than characters in history, or even our own friends; we have been told all about them that can be told; even if they are imperfect or unreal they do not contain any secrets, whereas our friends do and must, mutual secrecy being one of the conditions of life upon this globe. — E. M. Forster

The sun was already declining and each of the trees held a premonition of night. — E. M. Forster

He had awoken too late for happiness, but not for strength, and could feel an austere joy, as of a warrior who is homeless but stands fully armed. — E. M. Forster

The song of the future must transcend creed. — E. M. Forster

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. — E. M. Forster

Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work. — E. M. Forster

Disdaining the heroic outfit, excitable in her methods, garrulous, episodical, shrill, she misled her lover much as she misled her aunt. He mistook her fertility for weakness. He supposed her "as clever as they make 'em," but no more, not realizing that she was penetrating to the depths of his soul, and approving of what she found there. — E. M. Forster

They had tried to reproduce their own attitude to life upon the stage, and to dress up as the middle-class English people they actually were. — E. M. Forster

And if insight were sufficient, if the inner life were the whole of life, their happiness has been assured. — E. M. Forster

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

He built up a situation that was far enough from the truth. It never occurred to him that Helen was to blame. He forgot the intensity of their talk, the charm that had been lent him by sincerity, the magic of Oniton under darkness and of the whispering river. Helen loved the absolute. Leonard had been ruined absolutely, and had appeared to her as a man apart, isolated from the world. A real man, who cared for adventure and beauty, who desired to live decently and pay his way, who could have travelled more gloriously through life than the Juggernaut car that was crushing him. — E. M. Forster

Every life ought to contain both a turn and a return. — E. M. Forster

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

No, mother; no. She was really keen on Italy. This travel is quite a crisis for her." He found the situation full of whimsical romance: there was something half attractive, half repellent in the thought of this vulgar woman journeying to places he loved and revered. Why should she not be transfigured? The same had happened to the Goths. — E. M. Forster

In the creative state a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious, and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing with his normal experiences and out of the mixture he makes a work of art. — E. M. Forster

The true spirit of gastronomic joylessness. Porridge fills the Englishman up, and prunes clear him out. — E. M. Forster

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. — E. M. Forster

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

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. — E. M. Forster

She loved him with too clear a vision to fear his cloudiness — E. M. Forster

The Machine is the friend of ideas and the enemy of superstition: the Machine is omnipotent, eternal; blessed is the Machine. — E. M. Forster

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. — E. M. Forster

The novel is a formidable mass, and it is so amorphous - no mountain in it to climb, no Parnassus or Helicon, not even a Pisgah. It is most distinctly one of the moister areas of literature - irrigated by a hundred rills and occasionally degenerating into a swamp. I do not wonder that the poets despise it, though they sometimes find themselves in it by accident. And I am not surprised at the annoyance of the historians when by accident it finds itself among them. — E. M. Forster

But a lover is dogmatic. To him the world shall be beautiful and pure. When it is not, he ignores it. — E. M. Forster

It is my fate and perhaps my temperament to sign agreements with fools. — E. M. Forster

I'm always right. I'm quite uneasy at being always right so often. — E. M. Forster

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

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

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

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

When I think of what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love; it is one of the moments for which the world was made. — E. M. Forster

The Machine stops."
"What do you say?"
"The Machine is stopping, I know it, I know the signs."
She burst into a peal of laugher. — E. M. Forster

Her brain darted up and down; it grew pliant and strong. Her conclusion was that any human being lies nearer to the unseen than any organization, and from this she never varied. — E. M. Forster

The doctrine of laisser-faire will not work in the material world. — E. M. Forster

But it was the stupidity of passion, which would rather have nothing than a little. — E. M. Forster

I never could get on with representative individuals but people who existed on their own account and with whom it might therefore be possible to be friends. — E. M. Forster

I am certainly an ought and not a must. — E. M. Forster

He had no racial feeling - not because he was superior to his brother civilians, but because he had matured in a different atmosphere, where the herd instinct does not flourish. — E. M. Forster

One grows accustomed to being praised, or being blamed, or being advised, but it is unusual to be understood. — E. M. Forster

High born she might not be. But assuredly she cared about her ancestors, — E. M. Forster

I'm a holy man minus the holiness. — E. M. Forster

Too late... everything's always too late. — E. M. Forster

It all turns on affection now," said Margaret. "Affection. Don't you see?... And affection, when reciprocated, gives rights. Put that down in your notebook, Mr. Mansbridge. It's a useful formula. — E. M. Forster

London was beginning to illuminate herself against the night. Electric lights sizzled and jagged in the main thoroughfares, gas-lamps in the side streets glimmered a canary gold or green. The sky was a crimson battlefield of spring, but London was not afraid. Her smoke mitigated the splendour, and the clouds down Oxford Street were a delicately painted ceiling, which adorned while it did not distract. — E. M. Forster

Liking one person is an extra reason for liking another. — E. M. Forster

There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer. — E. M. Forster

Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man. — E. M. Forster

Yet complicated people were getting wet - not only the shepherds. For instance, the piano-tuner was sopping. So was the vicar's wife. So were the lieutenant and the peevish damsels in his Battlesden car. Gallantry, charity, and art pursued their various missions, perspiring and muddy, while out on the slopes beyond them stood the eternal man and the eternal dog, guarding eternal sheep until the world is vegetarian. — E. M. Forster

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. — E. M. Forster

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

Ronny's religion was of the sterilized Public School brand, which never goes bad, even in the tropics. Wherever he entered, mosque, cave or temple, he retained the spiritual outlook of the fifth form, and condemned as 'weakening' any attempt to understand them. — E. M. Forster

Leonard was superior to these people; he did believe in effort and in a steady preparation for the change that he desired. But of a heritage that may expand gradually, he had no conception: he hoped to come to Culture suddenly, much as the Revivalist hopes to come to Jesus. Those — E. M. Forster

If you let yourself go I am sure you are sensible. . . . You are inclined to get muddled, if I may judge from last night. Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them. By understanding George you may learn to understand yourself. — E. M. Forster

Italy was offering her the most priceless of all possessions - her own soul. — E. M. Forster

As her time in Florence drew to a close she was only at ease amongst those to whom she felt indifferent. — E. M. Forster

Mr Abrahams was a preparatory schoolmaster of the old-fashioned sort. He cared neither for work nor games, but fed his boys well and saw that they did not misbehave. The rest he left to the parents, and did not speculate how much the parents were leaving to him. Amid mutual compliments the boys passed out into a public school, healthy but backward, to receive upon undefended flesh the first blows of the world. — E. M. Forster

Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talks that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence. Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend. There are periods in the most thrilling day during which nothing happens, and though we continue to exclaim, "I do enjoy myself", or , "I am horrified," we are insincere. — E. M. Forster

If there is on earth a house with many mansions, it is the house of words. — E. M. Forster

Yes, oh dear, yes, the novel tells a story. — E. M. Forster

and Imperialism always had been one of her difficulties. — E. M. Forster

Ah, but you see, I didn't want to be fair. — E. M. Forster

A matter neither sensual nor sensational is ignored by the art of today. — E. M. Forster

It is devilish difficult to criticise society & also create human beings. — E. M. Forster

It is the starved imagination, not the well nourished, that is afraid. — E. M. Forster

Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives in the Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It was robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralyzed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it. The Machine develops - but not on our lies. The Machine proceeds - but not to our goal. We only exist as the blood corpuscles that course through its arteries, and if it could work without us, it would let us die. — E. M. Forster

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

This solitude opressed her; she was accustomed to have her thoughts confirmed by others or, at all events, contradicted; it was too dreadful not to know whether she was thinking right or wrong. — E. M. Forster

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. — E. M. Forster

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. — E. M. Forster

The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way. If it never surprises it is flat. Flat characters ... in their purest form ... are constructed round a single idea or quality; when there is more than one factor to them, we get the beginning of the curve toward the round. The really flat character can be experessed in one sentence such as, "I will never desert Mr Micawber." There is Mrs Micawber - she says she won't desert Mr Micawber; she doesn't, and there she is. — E. M. Forster

He chanced to be in a lucid critical mood, and would not sympathize with exaltation. — E. M. Forster

Letters have to pass two tests before they can be classed as good: they must express the personality both of the writer and of the recipient. — E. M. Forster

Their color slowly faded from out of the flowers; but their scent lingered to honey the air he breathed. — E. M. Forster

Love is of no value in a witness, as a barrister ought to know — E. M. Forster

Humility is a quality for which I have only a limited admiration. In many phases of life it is a great mistake and degenerates into defensiveness or hypocrisy. — E. M. Forster

There's never any great risk as long as you have money. — E. M. Forster

Men were not gods after all, but as human and as clumsy as girls. — E. M. Forster

Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return. — E. M. Forster

THE SIGNORA HAD NO business to do it," said Miss Bartlett, "no business at all. She promised us south rooms with a view close together, instead of which here are north rooms, looking into a court-yard, and a long way apart. Oh, Lucy! — E. M. Forster

At times our need for a sympathetic gesture is so great that we care not what exactly it signifies or how much we may have to pay for it afterwards. — E. M. Forster

If you pass life by it's jolly well going to pass you by in the future. If you're frightened it's all right--that's no harm; fear is an emotion. — E. M. Forster

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

But this is something new!' said Mrs. Munt, who collected new ideas as a squirrel collects nuts, and was especially attracted by those that are portable. — E. M. Forster

He had robbed the body of its taint, the world's taunts of their sting; he had shown her the holiness of direct desire. — E. M. Forster

And of course she had studied the civilization that had immediately preceded her own - the civilization that had mistaken the functions of the system, and had used it for bringing people to things, instead of for bringing things to people. Those funny old days, when men went for change of air instead of changing the air in their rooms! — E. M. Forster

The story of the Fall always fascinates me as a play ground, but I cannot find any profound meaning in it, because of my 'liberal' view of human nature: I cannot believe in a state of original innocence, still less in a profound meaning in it, and I am always minimising the conception and the extent of Sin and the sinfulness of sex. — E. M. Forster