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E. M. Forster Quotes - Page 11

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

In the novel we can know people perfectly, and, apart from the general pleasure of reading, we can find here a compensation for their dimness in life.

In the novel we can know people perfectly, and, apart from the general pleasure of reading, we can find here a compensation for their dimness in life.

Reading, People, Understanding

E. M. Forster (2010). “Aspects of the Novel”, p.98, RosettaBooks

One's favorite book is as elusive as one's favorite pudding.

Book, Taste, Pudding

There are occasions when I would rather feel like a fly than a spider.

Feelings, Spiders, Feels

But why I cry out against Rubens is because he painted undressed people instead of naked ones.

Art, People, Naked

How few writers can prostitute all their powers!

Power

1936 Abinger Harvest,'Ronald Firbank'.

If only the sense of actuality can be lulled-and it sleeps for ever in most historians-there is no passion that cannot be gratified in the past.

Passion, Sleep, Past

The novelist, unlike many of his colleagues, makes up a number of word-masses roughly describing himself (roughly: niceties shallcome later), gives them names and sex, assigns them plausible gestures, and causes them to speak by the use of inverted commas, and perhaps to behave consistently.

Sex, Character, Names

We may divide characters into flat and round.

Character, Literature, May

E. M. Forster (2010). “Aspects of the Novel”, p.103, RosettaBooks

Pity wraps the student of the past in an ambrosial cloud, and washes his limbs with eternal youth.

Past, Clouds, Students

Not only in sex, but in all things men have moved blindly, have evolved out of slime to dissolve into it when this accident of consequences is over.

Life, Sex, Men

England still waits for the supreme moment of her literature--for the great poet who shall voice her, or, better still, for the thousand little poets whose voices shall pass into our common talk.

Voice, Poetry, Waiting

E. M. Forster (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)”, p.733, Delphi Classics

Neanderthal man listened to stories, if one may judge by the shape of his skull.

Men, Skulls, Judging

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.

Moving, Home, Giving

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

I distrust Great Men... I believe in aristocracy, though... Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet... They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke.

Believe, Men, Class

"What I Believe". Essay by E. M. Forster, 1938.

Pathos, piety, courage, they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value.

Filth, Pathos, Piety

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

Man has to pick up the use of his functions as he goes along- especially the function of Love.

Men, Use, Function

E.M. Forster (2012). “A Room with a View”, p.166, Courier Corporation

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.

Falling In Love, Moving, Fate

E. M. Forster (2012). “Where Angels Fear to Tread”, p.96, Courier Corporation

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.

Gratitude, Children, Love Life

E. M. Forster (2015). “Where Angels Fear to Tread”, p.109, Booklassic

'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.'

Dream, Sleep, Lasts

"Maurice".

In the creative state a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious, and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing with his normal experiences and out of the mixture he makes a work of art.

Art, Taken, Men

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

If God could tell the story of the Universe, the Universe would become fictitious.

Stories, Ifs, Universe

E. M. Forster (2010). “Aspects of the Novel”, p.87, RosettaBooks

Very notable was his distinction between coarseness and vulgarity, coarseness, revealing something; vulgarity, concealing something.

Vulgarity Is, Revealing Something, Literature

'The Longest Journey' (1907) ch. 26

You do care a little for me, I know... but nothing to speak of, and you don't love me. I was yours once till death if you'd cared to keep me, but I'm someone else's now... and he's mine in a way that shocks you, but why don't you stop being shocked, and attend to your own happiness.

Care, Littles, Way

E M Forster (2011). “Maurice”, p.204, Hachette UK

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.

Thinking, Solitude, Events

E. M. Forster (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)”, p.386, Delphi Classics

I have almost completed a long novel, but it is unpublishable until my death and England's.

Long, England, Novel

"E. M. Forster: A New Life". Book by Wendy Moffat, p. 174, April 4, 2011.

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