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Home
Authors
E. M. Forster
English
Novelist
About the author
One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Life
#People
#Trust
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,
English
Novelist
#Art
#Universe
#Opinion
#Order
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,
English
Novelist
#Man
#Literature
So, two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Criticism
#Variety
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,
English
Novelist
#Influence
#Books
Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Nothing
The English countryside, its growth and its destruction, is a genuine and tragic theme.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Growth
#English
#Destruction
Oxford is Oxford: not a mere receptacle for youth, like Cambridge. Perhaps it wants its inmates to love it rather than to love one another.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Love
#Youth
The final test for a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Will
#Friends
#Affection
The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Belief
#Mind
#Race
#Taste
#Curiosity
#Humanism
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.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Will
#World
#Men
#Experience
#Historians
#Gain
#Genius
The more highly public life is organized the lower does its morality sink.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Life
#Public
#Morality
The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Life
#Love
#Death
#Food
#Facts
#Sleep
The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then queen died of grief is a plot.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Queen
#Grief
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.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Children
#World
#Luck
Surely the only sound foundation for a civilization is a sound state of mind.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#State
#Civilization
#Mind
#Sound
Those who prepared for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Life
#May
#Joy
The woman who can't influence her husband to vote the way she wants ought to be ashamed of herself.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Influence
#Woman
#Vote
#Husband
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,
English
Novelist
#Right
#Art
#Men
#Wrong
Only people who have been allowed to practise freedom can have the grown-up look in their eyes.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#People
#Freedom
#Eyes
Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think, creation's.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Criticism
#Creation
There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Day
#May
#Lies
There is something majestic in the bad taste of Italy.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Taste
#Italy
The sort of poetry I seek resides in objects man can't touch.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Man
#Poetry
The sadness of the incomplete, the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Life
#Art
#Sadness
The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#People
#Respect
#Society
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,
English
Novelist
#Money
Only a struggle twists sentimentality and lust together into love.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Love
#Struggle
#Lust
#Sentimentality
Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Evil
#Sense
#Writer
#Goodness
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,
English
Novelist
#Work
#Art
#Fact
#Existence
Tolerance is a very dull virtue. It is boring. Unlike love, it has always had a bad press. It is negative. It merely means putting up with people, being able to stand things.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Love
#People
#Being
#Virtue
#Negative
#Press
#Tolerance
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,
English
Novelist
#Stars
#Wind
#Trees
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,
English
Novelist
#Life
#Waiting
We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Shadow
We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Past
#Freedom
#Present
#Censorship
#Praise
We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Poor
We are all like Scheherazade's husband, in that we want to know what happens next.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Want
#Husband
Very notable was his distinction between coarseness and vulgarity, coarseness, revealing something; vulgarity, concealing something.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Vulgarity
I'm a holy man minus the holiness.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Man
#Holiness
I am certainly an ought and not a must.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
I am so used to seeing the sort of play which deals with one man and two women. They do not leave me with the feeling I have made a full theatrical meal they do not give me the experience of the multiplicity of life.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Life
#Play
#Feeling
#Man
#Experience
#Women
#Deals
#Multiplicity
I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Nations
#Mothers
I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man's pleasure when they come a cropper.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Man
#Men
#Pleasure
#Blood
#Distrust
I hate the idea of causes, and 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,
English
Novelist
#Hope
#Country
#Friend
#Idea
#Hate
#Causes
Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish!
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Mind
#Vice
I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I'd like to be.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#People
For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Vanity
Two cheers for Democracy; one because it admits variety, and two because it permits criticism.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Democracy
#Criticism
#Variety
Ideas are fatal to caste.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Ideas
Unless we remember we cannot understand.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
Liking one person is an extra reason for liking another.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Reason
Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Life
#Practice
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.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Writer
#Tests
#Personality
#Letters
I have no mystic faith in the people. I have in the individual.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#People
#Faith
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,
English
Novelist
#Nothing
#Question
#Causes
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,
English
Novelist
#Hope
#Country
#Friend
A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Nothing
#Information
America is rather like life. You can usually find in it what you look for. It will probably be interesting, and it is sure to be large.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Life
#Will
#America
At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Dignity
#Books
#Night
#Fire
At the side of the everlasting why, is a yes, and a yes, and a yes.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
Be soft, even if you stand to get squashed.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
How can I know what I think till I see what I say?
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Man
History develops, art stands still.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Art
#History
Charm, in most men and nearly all women, is a decoration.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Men
#Women
#Charm
Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Writers
#Causes
Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Death
#Man
#Idea
Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Life
#Courage
England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#England
#Nature
#Human nature
Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Faith
#Mind
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.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#People
#Friends
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.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Beauty
#Emotion
Love is always being given where it is not required.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Love
#Being
If there is on earth a house with many mansions, it is the house of words.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Words
#Earth
It is my fate and perhaps my temperament to sign agreements with fools.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Fate
#Fools
#Temperament
One marvels why the middle classes still insist on so much discomfort for their children at such expense to themselves.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Children
One is certain of nothing but the truth of one's own emotions.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Nothing
#Truth
#Emotions
One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
Nonsense and beauty have close connections.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Beauty
#Nonsense
No one is India.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvellous than the land.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Love
#People
#Land
Most quarrels are inevitable at the time; incredible afterwards.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Time
#Quarrels
No man can be an agnostic who has a sense of humour.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Man
#Sense
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,
English
Novelist
#Love
#Public
#Civilization
#Fact
#Tolerance
Paganism is infectious, more infectious than diphtheria or piety.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Piety
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,
English
Novelist
#People
#Nothing
#Death
#Nothingness
Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Adventure
Reverence is fatal to literature.
E. M. Forster,
English
Novelist
#Literature