-
Romance only dies with life. No pair of pincers will ever pull it out of us. But there is a spurious sentiment which cannot resist the unexpected and the incongruous and the grotesque. A touch will loosen it, and the sooner it goes from us the better.
E. M. Forster -
There's enough sorrow in the world, isn't there, without trying to invent it.
E. M. Forster
-
Axiom: Novel must have either one living character or a perfect pattern: fails otherwise.
E. M. Forster -
Hardship is vanishing, but so is style, and the two are more closely connected than the present generation supposes.
E. M. Forster -
The hungry and the homeless don't care about liberty any more than they care about cultural heritage. To pretend that they do care is cant.
E. M. Forster -
One can run away from women, turn them out, or give in to them. No fourth course.
E. M. Forster -
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.
E. M. Forster -
Pathos, piety, courage, - they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value.
E. M. Forster
-
One grows accustomed to being praised, or being blamed, or being advised, but it is unusual to be understood.
E. M. Forster -
An efficiency-regime cannot be run without a few heroes stuck about it to carry off the dullness - much as plums have to be put into bad pudding to make it palatable.
E. M. Forster -
Our easiest approach to a definition of any aspect of fiction is always by considering the sort of demand it makes on the reader. Curiosity for the story, human feelings and a sense of value for the characters, intelligence and memory for the plot. What does fantasy ask of us? It asks us to pay something extra.
E. M. Forster -
Self-pity? I see no moral objections to it, the smell drives people away, but that's a practical objection, and occasionally an advantage.
E. M. Forster -
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.
E. M. Forster -
Have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet at the same time - beautiful?
E. M. Forster
-
Sometimes I think too much fuss is made about marriage. Century after century of carnal embracement and we're still no nearer to understanding one another.
E. M. Forster -
Dead silence ensued, which was well enough for Ansell, to whom it merely meant that neither of us had any more to say. But to educated people silence matters; it is a token of stupidity and lack of invention.
E. M. Forster -
Science explained people, but could not understand them. After long centuries among the bones and muscles it might be advancing to knowledge of the nerves, but this would never give understanding
E. M. Forster -
Laughing at mankind is rather weary rot, I think. We shall never meet with anyone nicer. Nature, whom I used to be keen on, is too unfair. She evokes plenty of high & exhausting feelings, and offers nothing in return.
E. M. Forster -
What the world most needs today are negative virtues - not minding people, not being huffy, touchy, irritable or revengeful.
E. M. Forster -
Do not be proud of your inconsistency. It is a pity, it is a pity that we should be equipped like this. It is a pity that Man cannot be at the same time impressive and truthful.
E. M. Forster
-
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.
E. M. Forster -
There is an aristocracy of the sensitive. They represent the true human tradition of permanent victory over cruelty and chaos.
E. M. Forster -
A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy devices, coming now too late, now too early, by which Society would register the quick motions of man.
E. M. Forster -
I enjoy French poetry as well as French prose, and I believe that this land must have some cultural connection with the European continent, and that she is best connected through her spiritual complement across the Straits of Dover.
E. M. Forster