E. M. Forster Quotes
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The more highly public life is organized the lower does its morality sink.
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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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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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He had known so much about her once -what she thought, how she felt, the reasons for her actions. And now he only knew that he loved her, and all the other knowledge seemed passing from him just as he needed it most.
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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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History develops, art stands still.
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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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N.B. this book and pensées not important and the temptation to mistake them for Creation must be resisted.
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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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‘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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How can I know what I think till I see what I say?
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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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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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Very notable was his distinction between coarseness and vulgarity, coarseness, revealing something; vulgarity, concealing something.
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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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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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There's enough sorrow in the world, isn't there, without trying to invent it.
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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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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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Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch.