E.m. Forster Quotes

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

He educated Maurice, or rather his spirit educated Maurice's spirit, for they themselves became equal. Neither thought Am I led; am I leading? Love had caught him out of triviality and Maurice out of bewilderment in order that two imperfect souls might touch perfection.

~ E.m. Forster

I can only do what's easy. I can only entice and be enticed. I can't, and won't, attempt difficult relations. If I marry it will either be a man who's strong enough to boss me or whom I'm strong enough to boss. So I shan't ever marry, for there aren't such men. And Heaven help any one whom I do marry, for I shall certainly run away from him before you can say 'Jack Robinson.

~ E.m. Forster

we may say that History develops, Art stands still

~ E.m. Forster

Science explained people, but could not understand them.

~ E.m. Forster

Science is better than sympathy, if only it is science.

~ E.m. Forster

I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves.

~ E.m. Forster

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

Margaret had often wondered at the disturbance that takes place in the world's waters when Love, who seems so tiny a pebble, slips in. Whom does Love concern beyond the beloved and the lover? Yet his impact deluges a hundred shores

~ E.m. Forster

She stopped and leant her elbows against the parapet of the embankment. He did likewise. There is at times a magic in identity of position, it is one of the things that have suggested to us eternal comradeship.

~ E.m. Forster

Was Mrs. Wilcox one of the unsatisfactory people- there are many of them- who dangle intimacy and then withdraw it? They evoke our interests and affections, and keep the life of the spirit dawdling around them. Then they withdraw. When physical passion is involved, there is a definite name for such behaviour- flirting- and if carried far enough, it is punishable by law. But no law- not public opinion, even- punishes those who coquette with friendship, though the dull ache that they inflict, the sense of misdirected effort and exhaustion, may be as intolerable. Was she one of these?

~ E.m. Forster

He had a theory that musicians are incredibly complex, and know far less than other artists what they want and what they are; that they puzzle themselves as well as their friends; that their psychology is a modern development, and has not yet been understood.

~ E.m. Forster

Pity, if one can generalize, is at the bottom of woman. When men like us, it is for our better qualities, and however tender their liking, we dare not be unworthy of it, or they will quietly let us go. But unworthiness stimulates woman. It brings out her deeper nature, for good or for evil.

~ E.m. Forster

My father says that there is only one perfect view — the view of the sky straight over our heads, and that all these views on earth are but bungled copies of it.

~ E.m. Forster

There stood a young man who had the figure of a Greek athlete and the face of an English one...Just where he began to be beautiful the clothes started.

~ E.m. Forster

If you introduce the human figure you at once arouse either disgust or desire.

~ E.m. Forster

Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wishes to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time.

~ E.m. Forster

I did not fear that I might tread upon a live rail and be killed. I feared something far more intangible-doing what was not contemplated by the Machine. Then I said to myself, “Man is the measure”, and I went, and after many visits I found an opening.

~ E.m. Forster

Why children?' he asked. 'Why always children? For love to end where it begins is far more beautiful, and Nature knows it.

~ E.m. Forster

I'm afraid that in nine cases out of ten Nature pulls one way and human nature another.

~ E.m. Forster

I believed in a return to Nature once. But how can we return to Nature when we have never been with her? Today, I believe that we must discover Nature. After many conquests we shall attain simplicity. It is our heritage.

~ E.m. Forster

An acquaintance had become a lover, might become a husband, but would retain all that she had noted in the acquaintance; and love must confirm an old relation rather than reveal a new one.

~ E.m. Forster

The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected. The commonplace person begins to play, and shoots into the empyrean without effort, whilst we look up, marvelling how he has escaped us, and thinking how we could worship him and love him, would he but translate his visions into human words, and his experiences into human actions. Perhaps he cannot; certainly he does not, or does so very seldom.

~ E.m. Forster

The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world, it will acceptthose whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected.

~ E.m. Forster

No; look out for the part where you think you have done with the goblins and they come back,' breathed Helen, as the music started with a goblin walking quietly over the universe, from end to end.

~ E.m. Forster

While her lips talked culture, her heart was planning to invite him to tea

~ E.m. Forster

We move between two darknesses.

~ E.m. Forster

Either life entails courage or it ceases to be life.

~ E.m. Forster

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

I'd far rather leave a thought behind me than a child. Other people can have children.

~ E.m. Forster

For a wonderful physical tie binds the parents to the children; and—by some sad, strange irony—it does not bind us children to our parents. For if it did, if we could answer their love not with gratitude but with equal love, life would lose much of its pathos and much of its squalor, and we might be wonderfully happy.

~ E.m. Forster

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.

~ E.m. Forster

When we were only acquaintances, you let me be myself, but now you're always protecting me... I won't be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult. Can't I be trusted to face the truth but I must get it second-hand through you? A woman's place!

~ E.m. Forster

People turned out to be alive. Hitherto he had supposed that they were what he pretended to be - flat pieces of cardboard stamped with a conventional design… there came by no process of reason a conviction that they were human beings with feelings akin to his own.

~ E.m. Forster

As for her hair, or rather hairs, they are too complicated to describe, but one system went down her back, lying in a thick pad there, while another, created for a lighter destiny, rippled around her forehead.

~ E.m. Forster

The novelist defines the story with the following example: If you are told that the king died and then the queen died, that is a sequence of events. If you were told that the king died and then the queen died of grief, that is a story that he was interested.

~ E.m. Forster

Few travelled in these days, for, thanks to the advance of science, the earth was exactly alike all over. Rapid intercourse, from which the previous civilization had hoped so much, had ended by defeating itself. What was the good of going to Peking when it was just like Shrewsbury? Why return to Shrewsbury when it would all be like Peking? Men seldom moved their bodies; all unrest was concentrated in the soul.

~ E.m. Forster

Night and day, wind and storm, tide and earthquake, impeded man no longer. He had harnessed Leviathan. All the old literature, with its praise of Nature, and its fear of Nature, rang false as the prattle of a child.

~ E.m. Forster

How can the mind take hold of such a country? Generations of invaders have tried, but they remain in exile. The important towns they build are only retreats, their quarrels the malaise of men who cannot find their way home. India knows of their trouble. She knows of the whole world's trouble, to its uttermost depth. She calls Come through her hundred mouths, through objects ridiculous and august. But come to what? She has never defined. She is not a promise, only an appeal.

~ E.m. Forster

Human beings have their great chance in the novel.

~ E.m. Forster