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E.M. Forster Quotes
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Edward Morgan Forster , known as E. M. Forster, was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. Many of his novels examined class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society, notably A Room with a View , Howards End , and A Passage to India , which brought him his greatest success. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 16 different years.

✵ 1. January 1879 – 7. June 1970  •  Other names Е. М. Форстер
E.M. Forster photo
E.M. Forster: 200 quotes40 likes

E.M. Forster Quotes

“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

“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 book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View

“… there are shadows because there are hills.”

E.M. Forster book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View

“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.”

E.M. Forster

Source: Howard's End

“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.”

E.M. Forster book Maurice

Source: Maurice

“A humanist has four leading characteristics — curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.”

E.M. Forster

"George and Gide"
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)

“There's enough sorrow in the world, isn't there, without trying to invent it.”

E.M. Forster book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View (1908), Ch. 2

“Passion should believe itself irresistible. It should forget civility and consideration and all the other curses of a refined nature. Above all, it should never ask for leave where there is a right of way.”

E.M. Forster book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View

“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

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

E.M. Forster book Maurice

Source: Maurice

“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

“She only felt that the candle would burn better, the packing go easier, the world be happier, if she could give and receive some human love.”

E.M. Forster book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View

“Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there?”

E.M. Forster book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View

“All a child's life depends on the ideal it has of its parents. Destroy that and everything goes - morals, behavior, everything. Absolute trust in someone else is the essence of education.”

E.M. Forster book Where Angels Fear to Tread

Source: Where Angels Fear to Tread

“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 book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View

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

E.M. Forster book Maurice

Source: Maurice

“… though nothing is damaged, everything is changed.”

E.M. Forster book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View

“One doesn't come to Italy for niceness," was the retort; "one comes for life. Buon giorno! Buon giorno!”

E.M. Forster book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View

“When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.”

E.M. Forster

Source: The Life to Come and Other Stories

“But it struck him that people are not really dead until they are felt to be dead. As long as there is some misunderstanding about them, they possess a sort of immortality.”

E.M. Forster book A Passage to India

Source: A Passage to India

“The crime of suicide lies rather in its disregard for the feelings of those whom we leave behind.”

E.M. Forster book Howards End

Source: Howards End

“Nature pulls one way and human nature another.”

E.M. Forster

“They had nothing in common but the English language.”

E.M. Forster book Howards End

Source: Howards End

“A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy devices, coming now too late, now too early, by which Society would register the quick motions of man.”

E.M. Forster book Howards End

Source: Howards End

“I swear from the bottom of my heart I want to be healed. I want to be like other men, not this outcast whom nobody wants.”

E.M. Forster book Maurice

Source: Maurice

“Of course he despised the world as a whole; every thoughtful man should; it is almost a test of refinement.”

E.M. Forster book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View

“Don't be mysterious; there isn't the time.”

E.M. Forster book Where Angels Fear to Tread

Source: Where Angels Fear to Tread

“I'd far rather leave a thought behind me than a child. Other people can have children.”

E.M. Forster book A Passage to India

Source: A Passage to India

“Don't go fighting against the Spring.”

E.M. Forster book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View

“Though life is very glorious, it is difficult.”

E.M. Forster

Source: A Room with a View / Howards End

“We move between two darknesses.”

E.M. Forster book Aspects of the Novel

Source: Aspects of the Novel

“Sometimes I think too much fuss is made about marriage. Century after century of carnal embracement and we're still no nearer to understanding one another.”

E.M. Forster book A Passage to India

Source: A Passage to India

“The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say "yesterday I was happy, today I am not.”

E.M. Forster book Where Angels Fear to Tread

Source: Where Angels Fear to Tread

“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 book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View

“To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it.”

E.M. Forster book Howards End

Source: Howards End

“All men are equal - all men, that is, who possess umbrellas.”

E.M. Forster book Howards End

Source: Howards End

“A work of art is never finished. It is merely abandoned.”

E.M. Forster

“Excuse my mistakes, realize my limitations. Life is not easy as we know it on the earth.”

E.M. Forster book A Passage to India

Source: A Passage to India

“You told me once that we shall be judged by our intentions, not by our accomplishments. I thought it a grand remark. But we must intend to accomplish - not sit intending on a chair.”

E.M. Forster book Where Angels Fear to Tread

Source: Where Angels Fear to Tread

“Nothing's the same for anyone. That's why life's this Hell, if you do a thing you're damned, and if you don't you're damned….”

E.M. Forster book Maurice

Source: Maurice

“Because I say so little you think I don't feel. I care a lot.”

E.M. Forster book Maurice

Source: Maurice

“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 book Howards End

Source: Howards End

“I was yours once 'till death if you'd cared to keep me, but I'm someone else's now - I can't hang about whining forever - and he's mine in a way that shocks you, but why don't you stop being shocked, and attend to your own happiness?”

E.M. Forster book Maurice

Source: Maurice