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E. M. Forster Quotes - Page 10

All Quotes Adventure Age Art Atheism Belief Character Children Creativity Criticism Culture Curiosity Darkness Democracy Desire Earth Evil Fate Feelings Fighting Friendship Giving Heart Heaven Hills History Home Horror House Human Nature Husband Imagination Inspirational Joy Judging Language Life Literature Logic Love Luck Lying Memories Passion Past Poetry Reading Romance Romantic Love Running Sleep Society Sorrow Soul Stupidity Sunshine Teaching Tolerance Understanding Universe Values War Writing

My law-givers are Erasmus and Montaigne, not Moses and St Paul.

My law-givers are Erasmus and Montaigne, not Moses and St Paul.

Law, Erasmus, Moses

E.M. Forster (1951). “Two Cheers for Democracy”

Without form, the sensitiveness vanishes.

Form, Values

E.M. Forster (1951). “Two Cheers for Democracy”

English literature is a flying fish.

Fishing, Flying, Literature

Sex begins before adolescence, and survives sterility; it is indeed coeval with our lives, although at the mating age its effects are more obvious to Society.

Sex, Age, Mating

E. M. Forster (2010). “Aspects of the Novel”, p.78, RosettaBooks

Solidity, caution, integrity, efficiency. Lack of imagination, hypocrisy. These qualities characterize the middle classes in everycountry, but in England they are national characteristics.

Integrity, Character, Class

It is devilish difficult to criticise society & also create human beings.

Character, Society, Difficult

For you cannot have gentility without paying for it.

Class, Manners, Gentility

But after all, what have we to do with taverns? Real menace belongs to the drawing-room.

Real, Class, Drawing

E.M. Forster (2012). “A Room with a View”, p.57, Courier Corporation

Hope, politeness, the blowing of a nose, the squeak of a boot, all produce "boum.

Noses, Boots, Absence

'A Passage to India' (1924) ch. 14

The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken.

Strength, Success, Taken

E. M. Forster (2012). “Howards End”, p.76, Courier Corporation

The strong are so stupid.

Strength, Strong, Stupid

E.M. Forster (1951). “Two Cheers for Democracy”

The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal. Both assumptions are false: both of them must be accepted as true if we are to go on eating and working and loving, and are to keep open a few breathing holes for the human spirit.

Breathing, People, Goes On

E.M. Forster (1951). “Two Cheers for Democracy”

Paganism is infectious, more infectious than diphtheria or piety.

Literature, Paganism, Piety

E. M. Forster (2016). “A Room With A View: England Literature”, p.133, 谷月社

It is the starved imagination, not the well nourished, that is afraid.

Imagination, Wells

E. M. Forster (2012). “Howards End”, p.144, Courier Corporation

Italy and London are the only places where I don't feel to exist on sufferance.

London, Feels

E. M. Forster (2016). “A Room With A View: England Literature”, p.79, 谷月社

The novel is a formidable mass, and it is so amorphous - no mountain in it to climb, no Parnassus or Helicon, not even a Pisgah. It is most distinctly one of the moister areas of literature - irrigated by a hundred rills and occasionally degenerating into a swamp. I do not wonder that the poets despise it, though they sometimes find themselves in it by accident. And I am not surprised at the annoyance of the historians when by accident it finds itself among them.

Writing, Mountain, Literature

Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form.

Men, August, Poetry

E. M. Forster (2010). “A Passage to India”, p.211, RosettaBooks

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.

Portraiture, Roger, Able

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.

Writing, Trying, Literature

E. M. Forster (1987). “Commonplace Book”, p.92, Stanford University Press

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.

Thinking, Literature, Philosophic

E. M. Forster (1987). “Commonplace Book”, p.46, Stanford University Press

Democracy is not a Beloved Republic really, and never will be. But it is less hateful than other contemporary forms of government, and to that extent deserves our support.

Government, Support, Democracy

E.M. Forster (1951). “Two Cheers for Democracy”

[...] it is right to be kind and even sacrifice ourselves to people who need kindness and lie in our way - otherwise, besides failing to help them, we run into the aridity of self-development. To seek for recipients of one's goodness, to play the Potted Jesus leads to the contray the Christian danger.

Christian, Running, Jesus

E. M. Forster (1987). “Commonplace Book”, p.243, Stanford University Press

There's nothing like a debate to teach one quickness. I often wish I had gone in for them when I was a youngster. It would have helped me no end.

Wish, Gone, Debate

E.M. Forster (2015). “Howard's End”, p.119, Xist Publishing

The book [ A Passage to India ] shows signs of fatigue and disillusionment; but it has chapters of clear and triumphant beauty, and above all it makes us wonder, what will he write next?

Book, Writing, India

The woman who can't influence her husband to vote the way she wants ought to be ashamed of herself.

Husband, Literature, Want

E.M. Forster (2015). “Howard's End”, p.206, Xist Publishing

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