E. M. Forster Quotes
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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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A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.
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How can I know what I think till I see what I say?
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Peacefulness to be found in writing. Why do I not write every day? Partly because I feel I ought to write well and know I can't. But that is not a good enough reason for not writing, if it gains me poise & peace.
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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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Towns are after all excrescences, grey fluxions, where men, hurrying to find one another, have lost themselves.
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This element of surprise or mystery the detective element as it is sometimes rather emptily called is of great importance in a plot.
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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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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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Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch.
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Very notable was his distinction between coarseness and vulgarity, coarseness, revealing something; vulgarity, concealing something.
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Ideas are fatal to caste.
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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.
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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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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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The more highly public life is organized the lower does its morality sink.
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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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One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.
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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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We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet.
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I don't think literature will be purged until its philosophic pretentiousness is extruded, and I shant live to see that purge, nor perhaps when it has happened will anything survive.
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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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Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wants to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time.