E. M. Forster Quotes

Adventures do occur, but not punctually.

Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.

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.

Life' wrote a friend of mine, 'is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.

After all, is not a real Hell better than a manufactured Heaven?

It is fate that I am here,' George persisted, 'but you can call it Italy if it makes you less unhappy.

Did you ever dream you had a friend, Alec? Someone to last your whole life and you his. I suppose such a thing can’t really happen outside sleep.

Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its highest. Live in fragments no longer.

Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate.

I won't be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult.

It is so difficult - at least, I find it difficult - to understand people who speak the truth.

I think you’re beautiful, the only beautiful person I’ve ever seen. I love your voice and everything to do with you, down to your clothes or the room you are sitting in. I adore you.

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

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.

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