E. M. FORSTER (1879-1970), ENGLISH NOVELIST AND ESSAYIST, WHOSE NOVELS EXPLORE THE ATTITUDES THAT CREATE BARRIERS BETWEEN PEOPLE.
“People have their own deaths as well as their own lives, and even if there is nothing beyond death, we shall differ in our nothingness.”
“Adventures do occur, but not punctually. Life rarely gives us what we want at the moment we consider appropriate.”
“Life is sometimes life and sometimes only a drama, and one must learn to distinguish tother from which…”
“To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it.”
“The past is devoid of meaning like the present, and a refuge for cowards.”
“There is no harm in deceiving society as long as she does not find you out”
“Those who prepare for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy.”
“At times our need for a sympathetic gesture is so great that we care not what exactly it signifies or how much we may have to pay for it afterwards.”
“It isn't possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.”
“When love flies it is remembered not as love but as something else. Blessed are the uneducated, who forget it entirely, and are never conscious of folly or pruriency in the past, of long aimless conversations.”
“The crime of suicide lies rather in its disregard for the feelings of those whom we leave behind.”
“Men were not gods after all, but as human and as clumsy as girls.”
“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.”
“We know that we come from the winds, and that we shall return to them; that all life is perhaps a knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness. But why should this make us unhappy? Let us love one another, and work and rejoice. I don't believe in this world sorrow.”
“There's never any great risk as long as you have money.”
“All a child's life depends on the ideal it has of its parents. Destroy that and everything goes - morals, behavior, everything. Absolute trust in someone else is the essence of education.”
“Outside the arch, always there seemed another arch. And beyond the remotest echo, a silence.”
“The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected.”
“We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won't do harm - yes, choose a place where you won't do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.”
“The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty.”
“Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there?”
“It's not what people do to you, but what they mean, that hurts.”
“When I think of what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love; it is one of the moments for which the world was made.”
“Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.”
“This desire to govern a woman -- it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together.... But I do love you surely in a better way then he does." He thought. "Yes -- really in a better way. I want you to have your own thoughts even when I hold you in my arms.”
“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.”
“What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.”
“Passion should believe itself irresistible. It should forget civility and consideration and all the other curses of a refined nature. Above all, it should never ask for leave where there is a right of way.”
“While her lips talked culture, her heart was planning to invite him to tea”
“A happy ending was imperative. I shouldn't have bothered to write otherwise. I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows, and in this sense, Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood.”
“I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it — and I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil. I don't die — I don't fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there.”
“She only felt that the candle would burn better, the packing go easier, the world be happier, if she could give and receive some human love.”
“He had awoken too late for happiness, but not for strength, and could feel an austere joy, as of a warrior who is homeless but stands fully armed.”
“One touch of regret- not the canny substitute but the true regret from the heart- would have made him a different man, and the British Empire a different institution.”
“How indeed is it possible for one human being to be sorry for all the sadness that meets him on the face of the earth, for the pain that is endured not only by men, but by animals and plants, and perhaps by the stones?”
“Society is invincible - to a certain degree. But your real life is your own, and nothing can touch it. There is no power on earth that can prevent your criticizing and despising mediocrity - nothing that can stop you retreating into splendour and beauty - into the thoughts and beliefs that make the real life - the real you.”
“People have their own deaths as well as their own lives, and even if there is nothing beyond death, we shall differ in our nothingness.”
~ E.M. Forster, Howards End
“Adventures do occur, but not punctually. Life rarely gives us what we want at the moment we consider appropriate.”
~ E.M. Forster, A Passage to India
“Life is sometimes life and sometimes only a drama, and one must learn to distinguish tother from which…”
~ E.M. Forster, Howards End
“To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it.”
~ E.M. Forster, Howards End
“The past is devoid of meaning like the present, and a refuge for cowards.”
~ E.M. Forster, Maurice
“There is no harm in deceiving society as long as she does not find you out”
~ E.M. Forster, A Passage to India
“Those who prepare for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy.”
~ E.M. Forster, Howards End
“At times our need for a sympathetic gesture is so great that we care not what exactly it signifies or how much we may have to pay for it afterwards.”
~ E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
“It isn't possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.”
~ E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
“When love flies it is remembered not as love but as something else. Blessed are the uneducated, who forget it entirely, and are never conscious of folly or pruriency in the past, of long aimless conversations.”
~ E.M. Forster, Maurice
“The crime of suicide lies rather in its disregard for the feelings of those whom we leave behind.”
~ E.M. Forster, Howards End
“Men were not gods after all, but as human and as clumsy as girls.”
~ E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
“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, Howards End
“We know that we come from the winds, and that we shall return to them; that all life is perhaps a knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness. But why should this make us unhappy? Let us love one another, and work and rejoice. I don't believe in this world sorrow.”
~ E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
“There's never any great risk as long as you have money.”
~ E.M. Forster, Howards End
“All a child's life depends on the ideal it has of its parents. Destroy that and everything goes - morals, behavior, everything. Absolute trust in someone else is the essence of education.”
~ E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread
“Outside the arch, always there seemed another arch. And beyond the remotest echo, a silence.”
~ E.M. Forster, A Passage to India
“The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected.”
~ E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
“We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won't do harm - yes, choose a place where you won't do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.”
~ E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
“The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty.”
~ E.M. Forster, Howards End
“Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there?”
~ E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
“It's not what people do to you, but what they mean, that hurts.”
~ E.M. Forster, The Longest Journey
“When I think of what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love; it is one of the moments for which the world was made.”
~ E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
“Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.”
~ E.M. Forster, A Room With A View
“This desire to govern a woman -- it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together.... But I do love you surely in a better way then he does." He thought. "Yes -- really in a better way. I want you to have your own thoughts even when I hold you in my arms.”
~ E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
“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.”
~ E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
“What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.”
~ E.M. Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy
“Passion should believe itself irresistible. It should forget civility and consideration and all the other curses of a refined nature. Above all, it should never ask for leave where there is a right of way.”
~ E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
“While her lips talked culture, her heart was planning to invite him to tea”
~ E.M. Forster, Howards End
“A happy ending was imperative. I shouldn't have bothered to write otherwise. I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows, and in this sense, Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood.”
~ E.M. Forster, Maurice
“I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it — and I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil. I don't die — I don't fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there.”
~ E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread
“She only felt that the candle would burn better, the packing go easier, the world be happier, if she could give and receive some human love.”
~ E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
“He had awoken too late for happiness, but not for strength, and could feel an austere joy, as of a warrior who is homeless but stands fully armed.”
~ E.M. Forster, Maurice
“One touch of regret- not the canny substitute but the true regret from the heart- would have made him a different man, and the British Empire a different institution.”
~ E.M. Forster, A Passage to India
“How indeed is it possible for one human being to be sorry for all the sadness that meets him on the face of the earth, for the pain that is endured not only by men, but by animals and plants, and perhaps by the stones?”
~ E.M. Forster, A Passage to India
“Society is invincible - to a certain degree. But your real life is your own, and nothing can touch it. There is no power on earth that can prevent your criticizing and despising mediocrity - nothing that can stop you retreating into splendour and beauty - into the thoughts and beliefs that make the real life - the real you.”
~ E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread
