E. M. Forster Quotes
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There are moments when the inner life actually 'pays,' when years of self-scrutiny, conducted for no ulterior motive, are suddenly of practical use.
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Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly; they are still entangled with the desire for ownership.
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As her time in Florence drew to a close she was only at ease amongst those to whom she felt indifferent.
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Failure or success seems to have been allotted to men by their stars. But they retain the power of wriggling, of fighting with their star or against it, and in the whole universe the only really interesting movement is the wriggle.
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Belfastas uncivilised as ever--savage black mothers in houses of dark red brick, friendly manufacturers too drunk to entertain you when you arrive. It amuses me till I get tired.
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School was the unhappiest time of my life and the worst trick it ever played on me was to pretend that it was the world in miniature. For it hindered me from discovering how lovely and delightful and kind the world can be, and how much of it is intelligible.
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It is never possible for a novelist to deny time inside the fabric of his novel: he must cling, however lightly, to the thread of his story, he must touch the interminable tapeworm, otherwise he becomes unintelligible, which, in his case, is a blunder.
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Solidity, caution, integrity, efficiency. Lack of imagination, hypocrisy. These qualities characterize the middle classes in everycountry, but in England they are national characteristics.
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The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected.
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Just as words have two functions - information and creation - so each human mind has two personalities, one on the surface, one deeper down. The upper personality... is conscious and alert... The lower personality is a... perfect fool, but without it there is no literature.
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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.
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Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them.
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This solitude opressed her; she was accustomed to have her thoughts confirmed by others or, at all events, contradicted; it was too dreadful not to know whether she was thinking right or wrong.
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For it is a serious thing to have been watched. We all radiate something curiously intimate when we believe ourselves to be alone.
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It makes a difference doesn't it, whether we fully fence ourselves in, or whether we are fenced out by the barriers of others?
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The traveller who has gone to Italy to study the tactile values of Giotto, or the corruption of the Papacy, may return remembering nothing but the blue sky and the men and women who live under it.
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You talk as if a god had made the Machine," cried the other. "I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men. The Machine is much, but not everything.
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There was something better in life than this rubbish, if only he could get to it—love—nobility—big spaces where passion clasped peace, spaces no science could reach, but they existed for ever, full of woods some of them, and arched with majestic sky and a friend.
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Roger Fry is painting me. It is too like me at present, but he is confident he will be able to alter that. Post-Impressionism is at present confined to my lower lip... and to my chin.
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Curiosity is one of the lowest of the human faculties. You will have noticed in daily life that when people are inquisitive they nearly always have bad memories and are usually stupid at bottom.
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It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror--on thethings that I might have avoided.
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'A friend,' he repeated, sentimental suddenly. 'Someone to last your whole life and you his. I suppose such a thing can't really happen outside sleep.'
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... it is now only in letters I write what I feel: not in literature any more, and I seldom say it, because I keep trying to be amusing.
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I am actually what my age and my upbringing have made me - a bourgeois who adheres to the British constitution, adheres to it rather than supports it, and the fact that this isn't dignified doesn't worry me.