Maurice Forster Quotes & Sayings

Standing each by his monster, they looked at each other, and smiled — E. M. Forster

I knew you read the Symposium in the vac," he said in a low voice.
Maurice felt uneasy.
"Then you understand - without me saying more - "
"How do you mean?"
Durham could not wait. People were all around them, but with eyes that had gone intensely blue he whispered, "I love you. — E. M. Forster

So he was queer, E.M. Forster. It wasn't his middle name (that would be 'Morgan'), but it was his orientation, his romping pleasure, his half-secret, his romantic passion. In the long-suppressed novel Maurice the title character blurts out his truth, 'I'm an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.' It must have felt that way when Forster came of sexual age in the last years of the 19th century: seriously risky and dangerously blurt-able. The public cry had caught Wilde, exposed and arrested him, broken him in prison. He was one face of anxiety to Forster; his mother was another. As long as she lived (and they lived together until she died, when he was 66), he couldn't let her know. — Michael Levenson

Beautiful conventions received them--while beyond the barrier Maurice wandered, the wrong words on his lips, the wrong desires in his heart, and his arms full of air. — E. M. Forster

Madness is not for everyone, but Maurice's proved the thunderbolt that dispels the clouds. The storm had been working up not for three days as he supposed, but for six years. It had brewed in the insecurities of being where no eye pierces, his surroundings had thickened it. It had burst and he had not died. The brilliancy of day was around him, he stood upon the mountain range that overshadows youth, he saw. — E. M. Forster

In Maurice I tried to create a character who was completely unlike myself or what I supposed myself to be: someone handsome, healthy, bodily attractive, mentally torpid, not a bad business man and rather a snob. Into this mixture I dropped an ingredient that puzzles him, wakes him up, torments him and finally saves him. — E. M. Forster

A trouble - nothing as beautiful as a sorrow - rose to the surface of his mind, displayed its ungainliness and sank. Its precise nature he did not ask himself, for his hour was not yet, but the hint was appalling, and, hero though he was, he longed to be a little boy again, and to stroll half awake for ever by the colourless sea. — E. M. Forster

I should have gone through life half awake if you'd had the decency to leave me alone. Awake intellectually, yes, and emotionally in a way; but here--" He pointed with his pipe stem to his heart; and both smiled. "Perhaps we woke up one another. I like to think that anyway. — E. M. Forster

You can when you mean to,' said Maurice gently. 'You can do anything once you know what it is. — E. M. Forster

He was not sure, but liked it. It recurred when they met suddenly or had been silent. It beckoned to him across intellect, saying, "This is all very well, you're clever, we know - but come!" It haunted him so that he watched for it while his brain and tongue were busy, and when it came he felt himself replying, "I'll come - I didn't know."
"You can't help yourself now. You must come."
"I don't want to help myself."
"Come then."
He did come. He flung down all the barriers - not at once, for he did not live in a house that can be destroyed in a day. — E. M. Forster

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. — E. M. Forster

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

He lived on, miserable and misunderstood, as before, and increasingly lonely. One cannot write those words too often: Maurice's loneliness: it increased. — E. M. Forster

A happy ending was imperative. I shouldn't have bothered to write otherwise. I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows, and in this sense, Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood. — E. M. Forster

To forget everything - even happiness. Happiness! A casual tickling of someone or something against oneself - that's all. Would that we had never been lovers! For then, Maurice, you and I should have lain still and been quiet. We should have slept, then had we been at rest with kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate palaces for themselves - '
'What on earth are you talking about? — E. M. Forster

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

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

Maurice hated cricket. It demanded a snickety neatness he could not supply. — E. M. Forster

Maurice was scandalized, horrified. He was shocked to the bottom of his suburban soul.... — E. M. Forster

I swear from the bottom of my heart I want to be healed. I want to be like other men, not this outcast whom nobody wants. — E. M. Forster

I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows. — 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

He questioned Maurice, who, when he grasped the point, was understood to reply that deeds are more important than words. — E. M. Forster