Famous Quotes by E.M. (Edward Morgan) Forster
- Belfast ... as uncivilised as ever—savage black mothers in houses of dark red brick, friendly... More
- Life.—No, I’ve nothing to teach you about it for the moment. May be writing about it another... More
- The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little... More
- To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in... More
- If there is on earth a house with many mansions, it is the house of words. More
- Reverence is fatal to literature. More
- The temples, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came... More
- No one is India. More
- Hope, politeness, the blowing of a nose, the squeak of a boot, all produce “boum.” More
- India’s a muddle. More
- “God is love.” More
- I’m a holy man minus the holiness. More
- But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to... More
- Ideas are fatal to caste. More
- Nothing was explained, and yet there was no romance. More
- He neglects to come. More
- We must exclude someone from our gathering, or we shall be left with nothing. More
- It is so difficult—at least, I find it difficult—to understand people who speak the truth. More
- Liking one person is an extra reason for liking another. More
- The sadness of the incomplete—the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art. More
- Pan had been amongst them—not the great god Pan, who has been buried these two thousand years,... More
- He had robbed the body of its taint, the world’s taunts of their sting; he had shown her the... More
- But after all, what have we to do with taverns? Real menace belongs to the drawing-room. More
- The traveller who has gone to Italy to study the tactile values of Giotto, or the corruption of... More
- Paganism is infectious—more infectious than diphtheria or piety.... More
- Neither the Ages of Faith nor the Age of Doubt had touched him; he was Phaethon in Tuscany... More
- It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles... More
- Men fall into two classes—those who forget views and those who remember them. More
- We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand. More
- She loved Cecil; George made her nervous; will the reader explain to her that the phrases should... More
- He remained in the grip of a certain devil whom the modern world knows as self-consciousness, and... More
- Without form, the sensitiveness vanishes. More
- It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths; it is the lighthouse... More
- The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death. More
- We are all like Scheherazade’s husband, in that we want to know what happens next. More
- We may divide characters into flat and round. More
- Yes—oh, dear, yes—the novel tells a story. More
- The novelist, unlike many of his colleagues, makes up a number of word-masses roughly describing... More
- “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then queen died of... More
- The final test of a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of... More
- History develops, art stands still. More
- Beauty ought to look a little surprised: it is the emotion that best suits her face.... The... More
- We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also... More
- The historian must have ... some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise... More
- Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable. More
- Only people who have been allowed to practise freedom can have the grown-up look in their eyes. More
- There are occasions when I would rather feel like a fly than a spider. More
- The English countryside, its growth and its destruction, is a genuine and tragic theme. More
- Ulysses ... is a dogged attempt to cover the universe with mud, an inverted Victorianism, an... More
- I am certainly an “ought” and not a “must.” More
- The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief... More
- Charm, in most men and nearly all women, is a decoration. More
- One marvels why ... the middle classes still insist on so much discomfort for their children at... More
- Letters have to pass two tests before they can be classed as good: they must express the... More
- Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him. More
- So long, you bastard.
It isn’t size that counts so much as the way things are arranged. More
- Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him. More
- It will be generally admitted that Beethoven’s Fifth is the most sublime noise that has ever... More
- The businessman who assumes that his life is everything, and the mystic who asserts that it is... More
- One is certain of nothing but the truth of one’s own emotions. More
- No; truth, being alive, was not halfway between anything. It was only to be found by continuous... More
- A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the... More
- It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness. More
- England still waits for the supreme moment of her literature—for the great poet who shall voice... More
- The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and... More
- Oxford is—Oxford: not a mere receptacle for youth, like Cambridge. Perhaps it wants its inmates... More
- Railway termini ... are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into... More
- We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the... More
- Panic and emptiness! Panic and emptiness! More
- “It’s better to be fooled than to be suspicious”Mthat the confidence trick is the work of... More
- America is rather like life. You can usually find in it what you look for.... It will probably be... More
- One’s favorite book is as elusive as one’s favorite pudding. More
- I am actually what my age and my upbringing have made me—a bourgeois who adheres to the British... More
- Those who prepared for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense... More
- Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both... More
- I believe we shall come to care about people less and less.... The more people one knows the... More
- Only a struggle twists sentimentality and lust together into love. More
- England has always been disinclined to accept human nature. More
- Not only in sex, but in all things men have moved blindly, have evolved out of slime to dissolve... More
- But the body is deeper than the soul and its secrets inscrutable. More
- The so called white races are really pinko-grey. More
- The woman who can’t influence her husband to vote the way she wants ought to be ashamed of... More
- Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage... More
- As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached... More
- English literature is a flying fish. More
- Solidity, caution, integrity, efficiency. Lack of imagination, hypocrisy. These qualities... More
- The Germans are called brutal, the Spanish cruel, the Americans superficial, and so on; but we... More
- It is not that the Englishman can’t feel—it is that he is afraid to feel. He has been taught... More
- Failure or success seem to have been allotted to men by their stars. But they retain the power of... More
- Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life. More
- For you cannot have gentility without paying for it. More
- Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvellous than the land. More
- Art for art’s sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one... More
- I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the... More
- Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon. More
- Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish! How can I tell what I think till I see what I say? More
- How few writers can prostitute all their powers! More
- God is not Love in the East. He is Power, although Mercy may temper it. More
- Chicago—is—oh well a façade of skyscrapers facing a lake, and behind the façade every type... More
- Love is always being given where it is not required. More
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