E. M. Forster famous quotes

The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death." "We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
-- E. M. Forster

#Letting Go #Inspirational Life #Sleep

One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.
-- E. M. Forster

#Football #Motivation #Passion

It isn't possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.
-- E. M. Forster

#Love #Romantic #Romance

One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.
-- E. M. Forster

#Friendship #Trust #Real Friends

What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?
-- E. M. Forster

#Stars #Wind #Tree

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.
-- E. M. Forster

#Art #Believe #Order

I believe we shall come to care about people less and less, Helen. The more people one knows, the easier it becomes to replace them. It's one of the curses of London. I quite expect to end my life caring most for a place.
-- E. M. Forster

#Believe #Caring #People

Unless we remember we cannot understand.
-- E. M. Forster

#Life #Memories #Understanding

Adventures do occur, but not punctually.
-- E. M. Forster

#Adventure

It isn't possible to love and to part.
-- E. M. Forster

Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
-- E. M. Forster

#Inspirational #Education #Running

Romance only dies with life. No pair of pincers will ever pull it out of us. But there is a spurious sentiment which cannot resist the unexpected and the incongruous and the grotesque. A touch will loosen it, and the sooner it goes from us the better.
-- E. M. Forster

#Romance #Pairs #Unexpected

Books have to be read (worse luck it takes so long a time). It is the only way of discovering what they contain. A few savage tribes eat them, but reading is the only method of assimilation revealed to the West.
-- E. M. Forster

#Book #Reading #Long

Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate.
-- E. M. Forster

#Life And Love #Giving #Want

A happy ending was imperative. I shouldn't have bothered to write otherwise. I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows, and in this sense, Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood.
-- E. M. Forster

#Falling In Love #Writing #Men

How can I know what I think till I see what I say?
-- E. M. Forster

#Writing #Thinking #Literature

At the moment they vanished they were everywhere, the cool benediction of the night descended, the stars sparkled, and the whole universe was a hill.
-- E. M. Forster

#Stars #Night #Hills

I can only do what's easy. I can only entice and be enticed. I can't, and won't, attempt difficult relations. If I marry it will either be a man who's strong enough to boss me or whom I'm strong enough to boss. So I shan't ever marry, for there aren't such men. And Heaven help any one whom I do marry, for I shall certainly run away from him before you can say 'Jack Robinson.
-- E. M. Forster

#Running #Strong #Men

She must be assured that it is not a criminal offense to love at first sight.
-- E. M. Forster

#Sight #Criminals #Firsts

A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.
-- E. M. Forster

#Poetry #Together #Literature

Human beings have their great chance in the novel.
-- E. M. Forster

#Chance #Novel #Humans

When love flies it is remembered not as love but as something else.
-- E. M. Forster

#Remembered

At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.
-- E. M. Forster

#Book #Night #Fire

But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to merge in something else.
-- E. M. Forster

#Causes #India #Asking

People have their own deaths as well as their own lives, and even if there is nothing beyond death, we shall differ in our nothingness.
-- E. M. Forster

#People #Wells #Nothingness

The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.
-- E. M. Forster

#Race #Curiosity #Mind

One is certain of nothing but the truth of one's own emotions.
-- E. M. Forster

#History #Emotion #Certain

I cannot help thinking that there is something to admire in everyone, even if you do not approve of them.
-- E. M. Forster

#Thinking #Helping #Admire

One of the evils of money is that it tempts us to look at it rather than at the things that it buys.
-- E. M. Forster

#Evil #Temptation #Looks

If human nature does alter it will be because individuals manage to look at themselves in a new way. Here and there people - a very few people, but a few novelists are among them - are trying to do this. Every institution and vested interest in against such a search: organized religion, the State, the family in its economic aspect, have nothing to gain, and it is only when outward prohibitions weaken that it can proceed: history conditions it to that extent.
-- E. M. Forster

#People #Trying #Novelists

Money pads the edges of things.
-- E. M. Forster

#Pads

Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think, creation's.
-- E. M. Forster

#Thinking #Criticism #Literature

Do not be proud of your inconsistency. It is a pity, it is a pity that we should be equipped like this. It is a pity that Man cannot be at the same time impressive and truthful.
-- E. M. Forster

#Men #Proud #Truthful

I do like Christmas on the whole.... In its clumsy way, it does approach Peace and Goodwill. But it is clumsier every year.
-- E. M. Forster

#Christmas #Holiday #Years

Passion does not blind. No. Passion is sanity, and the woman you love, she is the only person you will ever really understand.
-- E. M. Forster

#Passion #Doe #Sanity

Have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet at the same time - beautiful?
-- E. M. Forster

#Beautiful #People

The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world.
-- E. M. Forster

#World #Kingdoms #This World

When that strange race nears the dust and is condemned as untouchable, then nature remembers the physical perfection that she accomplished elsewhere, and throws out a god-not many, but one here and there, to prove to society how little its categories impress her.
-- E. M. Forster

#Race #Dust #Perfection

The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.
-- E. M. Forster

#Book #Gone #Littles

While her lips talked culture, her heart was planning to invite him to tea
-- E. M. Forster

#Heart #Tea #Culture

She loved him absolutely, perhaps for half an hour.
-- E. M. Forster

#Half #Hours

School was the unhappiest time of my life and the worst trick it ever played on me was to pretend that it was the world in miniature. For it hindered me from discovering how lovely and delightful and kind the world can be, and how much of it is intelligible.
-- E. M. Forster

#School #Lovely #World

If we act the truth the people who really love us are sure to come back to us in the long run
-- E. M. Forster

#Running #Long #People

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.
-- E. M. Forster

#Lying #Love You #Fighting

You confuse what's important with what's impressive.
-- E. M. Forster

#Important #Impressive

The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists.
-- E. M. Forster

#Art #Perfect #Facts

They had nothing in common but the English language.
-- E. M. Forster

#Common #Language #English Language

A novel must give a sense of permanence as well as a sense of life.
-- E. M. Forster

#Writing #Giving #Novel

The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul.
-- E. M. Forster

#Honesty #Men #Soul

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.
-- E. M. Forster

#Eye #Entering #Victim

Liking one person is an extra reason for liking another.
-- E. M. Forster

#Liking Someone #Literature #Reason

The fact is we can only love what we know personally. And we cannot know much. In public affairs, in the rebuilding of civilization, something less dramatic and emotional is needed, namely tolerance.
-- E. M. Forster

#Emotional #Civilization #Tolerance

Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them.
-- E. M. Forster

#Inspirational #Life #Beautiful

I'm a holy man minus the holiness.
-- E. M. Forster

#Men #Literature #Holiness

When love flies it is remembered not as love but as something else. Blessed are the uneducated, who forget it entirely, and are never conscious of folly or pruriency in the past, of long aimless conversations.
-- E. M. Forster

#Blessed #Past #Long

Axiom : Novel must have either one living character or a perfect pattern: fails otherwise.
-- E. M. Forster

#Character #Perfect #Patterns

The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.
-- E. M. Forster

#People #Society #Literature

Don't go fighting against the Spring.
-- E. M. Forster

#Spring #Fighting

Charm, in most men and nearly all women, is a decoration.
-- E. M. Forster

#Men #Literature #Charm

Like all her friends, I miss her greatly...But...I am sure there is no case for lamentation...Virginia Woolf got through an immense amount of work, she gave acute pleasure in new ways, she pushed the light of the English language a little further against darkness. Those are facts.
-- E. M. Forster

#Light #Virginia #Missing

At times our need for a sympathetic gesture is so great that we care not what exactly it signifies or how much we may have to pay for it afterwards.
-- E. M. Forster

#Needs #Care #May

Then she lay on her back and gazed at the cloudless sky. Mr. Beebe, whose opinion of her rose daily, whispered to his niece that that was the proper way to behave if any little thing went wrong.
-- E. M. Forster

#Niece #Sky #Rose

Art for art's sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orderly product which our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths, it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden. It is the best evidence we can have of our dignity.
-- E. M. Forster

#Art #Thinking #Echoes

Life is like a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the intrument as you go along
-- E. M. Forster

#Life Is Like #Violin #Life Is

Nonsense and beauty have close connections.
-- E. M. Forster

#Beauty #Connections #Literature

Expansion, that is the idea the novelist must cling to, not completion, not rounding off, but opening out.
-- E. M. Forster

#Writing #Ideas #Novelists

Words deserted him immediately. He could only speak when he was not asked to.
-- E. M. Forster

#Speak

The historian records, but the novelist creates.
-- E. M. Forster

#Writing #Novelists #Records

History develops, art stands still.
-- E. M. Forster

#Art #History #Literature

Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.
-- E. M. Forster

#Fashion #Clothes #Mistrust

Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvellous than the land.
-- E. M. Forster

#Land #People #Literature

Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.
-- E. M. Forster

#Writing #Creativity #Creative

The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected. The commonplace person begins to play, and shoots into the empyrean without effort, whilst we look up, marvelling how he has escaped us, and thinking how we could worship him and love him, would he but translate his visions into human words, and his experiences into human actions. Perhaps he cannot; certainly he does not, or does so very seldom.
-- E. M. Forster

#Thinking #Play #Effort

We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won't do harm - yes, choose a place where you won't do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.
-- E. M. Forster

#Moving #Sunshine #Darkness

You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you.
-- E. M. Forster

Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence.
-- E. M. Forster

#Book #Interesting #Literature

I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.
-- E. M. Forster

#Mother #War #Grateful

One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.
-- E. M. Forster

#Book #Reading #Writing

Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.
-- E. M. Forster

#Death #Men #Ideas

The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.
-- E. M. Forster

#Life #Sleep #Enlightenment

If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
-- E. M. Forster

#Friendship #Country #Betrayal

Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.
-- E. M. Forster

#Practice #Literature #Life Is

To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.
-- E. M. Forster

#Art #Men #Creative

What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.
-- E. M. Forster

#Reading #Men #Literature

Don't be mysterious; there isn't the time.
-- E. M. Forster

#Mysterious

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.
-- E. M. Forster

#Piano #Rebel #World

Sudden conversion ... is particularly attractive to the half-baked mind.
-- E. M. Forster

#Mind #Atheism #Half

He had known so much about her once -what she thought, how she felt, the reasons for her actions. And now he only knew that he loved her, and all the other knowledge seemed passing from him just as he needed it most.
-- E. M. Forster

#Action #Reason #Passing

Do you remember Italy?
-- E. M. Forster

#Remember

Aziz winked at him slowly and said: “...There are many ways of being a man; mine is to express what is deepest in my heart.
-- E. M. Forster

#Heart #Men #Way

Do you suppose there's any difference between spring in nature and spring in man? But there we go, praising the one and condemning the other as improper, ashamed that the same laws work eternally through both.
-- E. M. Forster

#Spring #Men #Law

Ah, but you see, I didn't want to be fair.
-- E. M. Forster

#Book #Want #Language

Before the civil war, Pottibakia was a normal member of the Comity of Nations. She erected tariff walls, broke treaties, persecuted minorities, obstructed at conferences unless she was convinced there was no danger of a satisfactory solution; then she strained every nerve in the cause of peace.
-- E. M. Forster

#Wall #War #Nerves

As for 'story' I never yet did enjoy a novel or play in which someone didn't tell me afterward that there was something wrong with the story, so that's going to be no drawback as far as I'm concerned. "Good Lord, why am I so bored" "I know; it must be the plot developing harmoniously." So I often reply to myself, and there rises before me my special nightmare that of the writer as craftsman, natty and deft.
-- E. M. Forster

#Play #Bored #Special

Man can learn everything if he will but try.
-- E. M. Forster

#Men #Trying

The story of the Fall always fascinates me as a play ground, but I cannot find any profound meaning in it, because of my 'liberal' view of human nature: I cannot believe in a state of original innocence, still less in a profound meaning in it, and I am always minimising the conception and the extent of Sin and the sinfulness of sex.
-- E. M. Forster

#Sex #Believe #Fall

It is easy to sympathize at a distance,' said an old gentleman with a beard. 'I value more the kind word that is spoken close to my ear.
-- E. M. Forster

#Distance #Gentleman #Ears

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.
-- E. M. Forster

#Character #Fighting #Artist

Science, when applied to personal relationships, is always just wrong .
-- E. M. Forster

One has two duties - to be worried and not to be worried.
-- E. M. Forster

#Life #Two #Worried