E. M. Forster Quotes

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.

She could not explain in so many words, but she felt that those who prepare for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy. It is necessary to prepare for an examination, or a dinner-party, or a possible fall in the price of stock: those who attempt human relations must adopt another method, or fail.

Democracy is not a beloved Republic really, and never will be. But it is less hateful than other contemporary forms of government, and to that extent it deserves our support. It does start from the assumption that the individual is important, and that all types are needed to make a civilization. It does not divide its citizens into the bossers and the bossed — as an efficiency-regime tends to do. 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, and such people get more of a chance under a democracy than elsewhere. They found religions, great or small, or they produce literature and art, or they do disinterested scientific research, or they may be what is called "ordinary people", who are creative in their private lives, bring up their children decently, for instance, or help their neighbours. All these people need to express themselves; they cannot do so unless society allows them liberty to do so, and the society which allows them most liberty is a democracy.

Expansion. That is the idea the novelist must cling to. Not completion. Not rounding off, but opening out.

Man's feet are the measure for distance, his hands are the measure for ownership, his body is the measure for all that is lovable and desirable and strong.

Why children?' he asked. 'Why always children? For love to end where it begins is far more beautiful, and Nature knows it.

What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives? They have never entered into mine, but into yours, we thought — Haven't we all to struggle against life's daily greyness, against pettiness, against mechanical cheerfulness, against suspicion? I struggle by remembering my friends; others I have known by remembering some place — some beloved place or tree — we thought you one of these.

from the middle-middle classes, whose highest desire seemed shelter – continuous shelter – not a lair in the darkness to be reached against fear, but shelter everywhere and always, until the existence of earth and sky is forgotten, shelter from poverty and disease and violence and impoliteness; and consequently from joy; God slipped this retribution in.

Pathos, piety, courage, — they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value.

I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals.

She was no longer examining life, but being examined by it; she had become a real person.

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.

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

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.

Outside the arch, always there seemed another arch. And beyond the remotest echo, a silence.