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E. M. Forster Quotes - Page 12

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This element of surprise or mystery — the detective element as it is sometimes rather emptily called — is of great importance in a plot. It occurs through a suspension of the time-sequence; a mystery is a pocket in

This element of surprise or mystery — the detective element as it is sometimes rather emptily called — is of great importance in a plot. It occurs through a suspension of the time-sequence; a mystery is a pocket in time, and it occurs crudely, as in "Why did the queen die?" and more subtly in half-explained gestures and words, the true meaning of which only dawns pages ahead. Mystery is essential to a plot, and cannot be appreciated without intelligence.

Queens, Marching On, Appreciate

"Aspects Of the Novel".

A novelist can shift view-point if it comes off. ... Indeed, this power to expand and contract perception (of which the shifting view-point is a symptom), this right to intermittent knowledge - I find one of the great advantages of the novel-form ... this intermittence lends in the long run variety and colour to the experiences we receive.

Running, Views, Long

Our final experience, like our first, is conjectural. We move between two darkness's.

Moving, Two, Darkness

Letters have to pass two tests before they can be classed as good: they must express the personality both of the writer and of the recipient.

Two, Personality, Letters

Men were not gods after all, but as human and as clumsy as girls.

Girl, Men, Room With A View

E.M. Forster (2012). “A Room with a View”, p.125, Courier Corporation

Only people who have been allowed to practise freedom can have the grown-up look in their eyes.

Eye, People, Looks

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

Beauty ought to look a little surprised: it is the emotion that best suits her face. The beauty who does not look surprised, who accepts her position as her due - she reminds us too much of a prima donna.

Funny, Beauty, Humor

E. M. Forster (2010). “Aspects of the Novel”, p.134, RosettaBooks

'Oh, poor, poor fellow!' said Mrs. Elliot with a remorse that was sincere, though her congratulations would not have been.

Sympathy, Congratulations, Sincere

E. M. Forster (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)”, p.278, Delphi Classics

Let her go to Italy!" he cried. "Let her meddle with what she doesn't understand!

Let Her Go, Cried

E. M. Forster (2016). “Where Angels Fear to Tread: England Literature”, p.63, 谷月社

Take an old man's word; there's nothing worse than a muddle in all the world. 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 the things that I might have avoided. We can help one another but little. I used to think I could teach young people the whole of life, but I know better now, and all my teaching of George has come down to this: beware of muddle.

Teaching, Fate, Men

E.M. Forster (2016). “A Room With a View (Diversion Classics)”, p.224, Diversion Books

“It is Fate that I am here,” persisted George. “But you can call it Italy if it makes you less unhappy.”

Fate, Unhappy, Room With A View

"Collected Works of 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.

Country, Home, Men

E. M. Forster (2010). “A Passage to India”, p.136, RosettaBooks

I do not believe in Belief.

Believe, Belief

1951 Two Cheers for Democracy,'What I Believe'.

In Europe life retreats out of the cold, and exquisite fireside myths have resulted—Balder, Persephone—but [in India] the retreat is from the source of life, the treacherous sun, and no poetry adorns it because disillusionment cannot be beautiful. 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, and India fails to accommodate them.

Beautiful, Men, August

I am a Jane Austenite, and therefore slightly imbecile about Jane Austen. My fatuous expression, and airs of personal immunity-how ill they sit on the face, say,of a Stevensonian! But Jane Austen is so different. She is my favourite author! I read and reread, the mouth open and the mind closed. Shut up in measureless content, I greet her by the name of most kind hostess, while criticism slumbers.

Air, Expression, Names

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

Book, Long, Criticism

and Related Writings (1974) p. 129

Culture had worked in her own case, but during the last few weeks she had doubted whether it humanized the majority, so wide and so widening is the gulf that stretches between the natural and the philosophic man, so many the good chaps who are wrecked in trying to cross it.

Men, Trying, Majority

E.M. Forster “Howards End”, Рипол Классик

Some leave our life with tears, others with an insane frigidity; Mrs. Wilcox had taken the middle course, which only rarer natures can pursue. She had kept proportion. She had told a little of her grim secret to her friends, but not too much; she had shut up her heart--almost, but not entirely. It is thus, if there is any rule, that we ought to die--neither as victim nor as fanatic, but as the seafarer who can greet with an equal eye the deep that he is entering, and the shore that he must leave.

Taken, Heart, Eye

E. M. Forster (2016). “Howards End: England Literature”, p.86, 谷月社

I have said that each aspect of the novel demands a different quality of the reader. Well, the prophetic aspect demands two qualities: humility and the suspension of the sense of humour.

Humility, Two, Empathy

E. M. Forster (2010). “Aspects of the Novel”, p.183, RosettaBooks

The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead. He can only gain that conception through personal experience, and he can only use his personal experiences when he is a genius.

Moving, Men, Gains

Our easiest approach to a definition of any aspect of fiction is always by considering the sort of demand it makes on the reader. Curiosity for the story, human feelings and a sense of value for the characters, intelligence and memory for the plot. What does fantasy ask of us? It asks us to pay something extra.

Memories, Character, Empathy

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.

Death, Men, Funeral

E.M. Forster (2015). “Howards End”, p.101, Sheba Blake Publishing

I never could get on with representative individuals but people who existed on their own account and with whom it might therefore be possible to be friends.

People, Might, Individual

Let us think of people as starting life with an experience they forget and ending it with one which they anticipate but cannot understand.

Thinking, People, Forget

E. M. Forster (2010). “Aspects of the Novel”, p.76, RosettaBooks

Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch.

Faith, Mind, Mental Health

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

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