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E. M. Forster Quotes - Page 16

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

But I have seen my obstacles: trivialities, learning and poetry. This last needs explaining: the old artist's readiness to dissolve characters into a haze. Characters cannot come alive and fight and guide the world

But I have seen my obstacles: trivialities, learning and poetry. This last needs explaining: the old artist's readiness to dissolve characters into a haze. Characters cannot come alive and fight and guide the world unless the novelist wants them to remain characters.

Character, Fighting, Artist

E. M. Forster (1987). “Commonplace Book”, p.151, Stanford University Press

A work of art is never finished. It is merely abandoned.

Art, Science, Abandoned

He stretched out his hands as he sang, sadly, because all beauty is sad…The poem had done no ‘good’ to anyone, but it was a passing reminder, a breath from the divine lips of beauty, a nightingale between two worlds of dust. Less explicit than the call to Krishna, it voiced our loneliness nevertheless, our isolation, our need for the Friend who never comes yet is not entirely disproved.

Loneliness, Dust, Hands

Riposte of "that old lady in the anecdote who was accused by her nieces of being illogical," Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish! How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?

Niece, Thinking, Anecdotes

There is much good luck in the world, but it is luck. We are none of us safe. We are children, playing or quarrelling on the line.

Children, Good Luck, Literature

'The Longest Journey' (1907) ch. 12

It is pleasant to be transferred from an office where one is afraid of a sergeant-major into an office where one can intimidate generals, and perhaps this is why history is so attractive to the more timid among us. We can recover self-confidence by snubbing the dead.

Self Confidence, History, Office

We are all like Scheherazade's husband, in that we want to know what happens next.

Husband, Literature, Want

E. M. Forster (2010). “Aspects of the Novel”, p.47, RosettaBooks

I'm a holy man minus the holiness. Hand that on to your three spies, and tell them to put it in their pipes.

Men, Hands, Spy

E. M. Forster (2010). “A Passage to India”, p.121, RosettaBooks

A novel is based on evidence, + or -x, the unknown quantity being the temperament of the novelist, and the unknown quantity always modifies the effect of the evidence, and sometimes transforms it entirely.

Novelists, Fiction, Sometimes

It is the function of the novelist to reveal the hidden life at its source: to tell us more about Queen Victoria than could be known, and thus to produce a character who is not the Queen Victoria of history.

Queens, Character, Novelists

E. M. Forster (2010). “Aspects of the Novel”, p.72, RosettaBooks

Growing old is an emotion which comes over us at almost any age; I had it myself between the ages of 25 and 30.

Age, Growing, Emotion

One minute. You know nothing about him. He probably has his own joys and interests- wife, children, snug little home. That's where we practical fellows'- he smiled-'are more tolerant than you intellectuals. We live and let live, and assume that things are jogging on fairly well elsewhere, and that the ordinary plain man may be trusted to look after his own affairs.

Children, Home, Men

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

All that is observable in a man-that is to say his actions and such of his spiritual existence as can be deduced from his actions-falls into the domain of history.

Spiritual, Fall, Men

E. M. Forster (2010). “Aspects of the Novel”, p.73, RosettaBooks

Ah, but you see, I didn't want to be fair.

Book, Want, Language

It so happened that Lucy, who found daily life rather chaotic, entered a more solid world when she opened the piano. She was then no longer either deferential or patronizing; no longer either a rebel or a slave.

Piano, Rebel, World

E. M. Forster (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)”, p.373, Delphi Classics

The idea that nations should love one another, or that business concerns or marketing boards should love one another, or that a man in Portugal should love a man in Peru of whom he has never heard -it is absurd, unreal, dangerous. The fact is we can only love what we know personally. And we cannot know much.

Love, Men, Ideas

I only wish the poets would say this too: love is of the body; not the body, but of the the body. Ah! the misery that would be saved if we confessed that! Ah! for a little directness to liberate the soul!

Love Is, Soul, Wish

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

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