E. M. Forster Quotes
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Towns are after all excrescences, grey fluxions, where men, hurrying to find one another, have lost themselves.
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The 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.
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The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists.
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N.B. this book and pensées not important and the temptation to mistake them for Creation must be resisted.
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It so happened that Lucy, who found daily life rather chaotic, entered a more solid world when she opened the piano. She was then no longer either deferential or patronizing; no longer either a rebel or a slave.
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But I have seen my obstacles: trivialities, learning and poetry. This last needs explaining: the old artist's readiness to dissolve characters into a haze. Characters cannot come alive and fight and guide the world unless the novelist wants them to remain characters.
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Probable that I am now better than most people and as good as I ever shall be at this game, and can therefore get to know anyone I wish, provided I am not physically repellent. And perhaps this is why personal relationships no longer seem to me a serious branch of study.
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Ideas are fatal to caste.
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History develops, art stands still.
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. . . life is sometimes life and sometimes only a drama, and one must learn to distinguish t'other from which . . .
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Very notable was his distinction between coarseness and vulgarity, coarseness, revealing something; vulgarity, concealing something.
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‘Why are pictures like this allowed?’ he suddenly cried. He had stopped in front of a colonial print in which the martyrdom of St Agatha was depicted with all the fervour that incompetence could command.‘It’s only a saint,’ said Lady Peaslake, placidly raising her head.‘How disgusting – and how ugly’‘Yes, very. It’s Roman Catholic.’
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But that was only the beginning of her mortification. Harold had proved her wrong. He had seen that she was a shifty, shallow hypocrite. She had not dared to be alone with him since her exposure. She had never looked at him and had hardly spoken. He seemed cheerful, but what was he thinking? He would never forgive her.
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How can I know what I think till I see what I say?
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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.
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There's enough sorrow in the world, isn't there, without trying to invent it.
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They go forth [into the world] with well-developed bodies, fairly developed minds and undeveloped hearts. An undeveloped heart - not a cold one. The difference is important.
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We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand.
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A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.
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Naked I came into this world, naked I shall go out of it. And a very good thing too, for it reminds me that I am naked under my shirt, whatever its colour.
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Hardship is vanishing, but so is style, and the two are more closely connected than the present generation supposes.
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He was obliged however to throw over Christianity. Those who base their conduct upon what they are rather than upon what they ought to be, always must throw it over in the end . . . .
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But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to merge in something else.
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There's nothing like a debate to teach one quickness. I often wish I had gone in for them when I was a youngster. It would have helped me no end.