Authors:

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z

E. M. Forster Quotes - Page 8

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

The English countryside, its growth and its destruction, is a genuine and tragic theme.

The English countryside, its growth and its destruction, is a genuine and tragic theme.

Growth, Literature, Destruction

The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way. If it never surprises it is flat. Flat characters ... in their purest form ... are constructed round a single idea or quality; when there is more than one factor to them, we get the beginning of the curve toward the round. The really flat character can be experessed in one sentence such as, "I will never desert Mr Micawber." There is Mrs Micawber - she says she won't desert Mr Micawber; she doesn't, and there she is.

Character, Curves, Ideas

It comes to this then: there always have been people like me and always will be, and generally they have been persecuted.

People, Like Me, Persecuted

Life's very difficult and full of surprises. At all events, I've got as far as that. To be humble and kind, to go straight ahead, to love people rather than pity them, to remember the submerged - well, one can't do all these things at once, worse luck, because they're so contradictory. It's then that proportion comes in - to live by proportion. Don't begin with proportion. Only prigs do that. Let proportion come in as a last resource, when the better things have failed.

Humble, People, Luck

E. M. Forster (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)”, p.580, Delphi Classics

By the side of the everlasting Why there is a Yes--a transitory Yes if you like, but a Yes.

Sides, Room With A View, Everlasting

E.M. Forster (2012). “A Room with a View”, p.22, Courier Corporation

Those who search for truth are too conscious of the maze to be hard on others...

Mazes, Conscious, Hard

"The Life to Come (and Other Stories)". Book by E. M. Forster, 1972.

No disease of the imagination is so difficult to cure, as that which is complicated with the dread of guilt : fancy and conscience then act interchangeably upon us, and so often shift their places, that the illusions of one are not distinguished from the dictates of the other.

Imagination, Guilt, Disease

E. M. Forster (1987). “Commonplace Book”, p.76, Stanford University Press

It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness.

Mind, Vices, Literature

E.M. Forster (2015). “Howard's End”, p.28, Xist Publishing

England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.

Literature, England, Human Nature

E M Forster (2011). “Maurice”, p.175, Hachette UK

Science explained people, but could not understand them. After long centuries among the bones and muscles it might be advancing to knowledge of the nerves, but this would never give understanding

Knowledge, Science, Long

E.M. Forster (2015). “Howard's End”, p.299, Xist Publishing

Science, when applied to personal relationships, is always just wrong .

Personal Relationships

Selected Letters (1983-1985): Letter 231, to W. J. H. Sprott, June 28, 1923.

It is never possible for a novelist to deny time inside the fabric of his novel: he must cling, however lightly, to the thread of his story, he must touch the interminable tapeworm, otherwise he becomes unintelligible, which, in his case, is a blunder.

Time, Novelists, Stories

E. M. Forster (2010). “Aspects of the Novel”, p.50, RosettaBooks

Failure or success seems to have been allotted to men by their stars. But they retain the power of wriggling, of fighting with their star or against it, and in the whole universe the only really interesting movement is the wriggle.

Stars, Failure, Fighting

This desire to govern a woman -- it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together.... But I do love you surely in a better way then he does." He thought. "Yes -- really in a better way. I want you to have your own thoughts even when I hold you in my arms.

Lying, Love You, Fighting

Gabrielle Vigot, Monica Corwin, Pan Zador, Coco Rousseau, Alexandre Dumas (2015). “Literary Love: 5 Wild and Wanton Classics”, p.1475, Simon and Schuster

Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man.

Men, Symphony, Sublime

Howards End (1910) ch. 5

It is my fate and perhaps my temperament to sign agreements with fools.

Fate, Agreement, Literature

The people I admire most are those who are sensitive and want to create something or discover something, and do not see life in terms of power.

People, Want, Sensitive

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

The businessman who assumes that his life is everything, and the mystic who asserts that it is nothing, fail, on this side and on that, to hit the truth. ‘Yes, I see, dear; it’s about half-way between,’ Aunt Juley had hazarded in earlier years. No; truth, being alive, was not halfway between anything. It was only to be found by continuous excursions into either realm, and though proportion is the final secret, to espouse it at the outset is to ensure sterility.

Aunt, Years, Secret

E. M. Forster (2014). “Great Novels of E. M. Forster: Where Angels Fear to Tread, The Longest Journey, A Room with a View, Howards End”, p.861, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

I am actually what my age and my upbringing have made me - a bourgeois who adheres to the British constitution, adheres to it rather than supports it, and the fact that this isn't dignified doesn't worry me.

Class, Worry, Support

"Liberty In England", Speech (June 21, 1935), reprinted in "Abinger Harvest", 1936.

Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly; they are still entangled with the desire for ownership.

Home, House, Desire

There has been, is, and always will be every conceivable type of person.

Type, Persons, Has Beens

You want to love everyone equally, and that's worse than impossible--it's wrong.

Love, Equality, Want

E. M. Forster (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)”, p.148, Delphi Classics

The traveller who has gone to Italy to study the tactile values of Giotto, or the corruption of the Papacy, may return remembering nothing but the blue sky and the men and women who live under it.

Men, Blue, Sky

E. M. Forster (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)”, p.361, Delphi Classics

The present flowed by them like a stream. The tree rustled. It had made music before they were born, and would continue after their deaths, but its song was of the moment. The moment had passed. The tree rustled again. Their senses were sharpened, and they seemed to apprehend life. Life passed. The tree rustled again.

Song, Tree, Moments

E. M. Forster (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)”, p.771, Delphi Classics

The hungry and the homeless don't care about liberty any more than they care about cultural heritage. To pretend that they do care is cant.

Liberty, Heritage, Care

You May Also Like: