Edward Morgan Forster citations (200 citations, Page 6)

Edward Morgan Forster: 200 citations0 J'aime

Edward Morgan Forster: Citations en anglais

“Axiom: Novel must have either one living character or a perfect pattern: fails otherwise.”

Source: Commonplace Book (1985), p. 6

“[Tolerance] is just a makeshift, suitable for an overcrowded and overheated planet. It carries on when love gives out, and love generally gives out as soon as we move away from our home and our friends.”

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E.M. Forster

"Tolerance"
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)

“I wrote it [Maurice] neither for my friends or the public—but because it was weighing on me; and my previous training made me write it as literature, though for a long time I meant to show it no one at all. […] I am much dependant on criticism and now, backed by you and some others, do feel that I have created something absolutely new, even to the Greeks. Whitman nearly anticipated me but he didn't really know what he was after, or only half knew—shirked, even to himself, the statement.”

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Letter 144, to Edward Joseph Dent, 6 March 1915
Selected Letters (1983-1985)

“What puzzles me most is your criticism that he showed 'no sense of engagement'. I haven't met the expression before, and feel bound to comment on its totalitarian tang. Engagement not with the truth as the speaker apprehends it, but with the alleged opinion of the majority of listeners.”

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Letter 400, to John Morris, 12 January 1953
Selected Letters (1983-1985)

“Always fatuity, vulgarity, as soon as human passion is touched. […] Just as some poetry is of the eye (form, colour) and some of the ear, so Keats is of the palate. Not only has he constant reference to its pleasures, but the general sensation after reading him is one of tasting. 'What's the harm?' Well, taste for some reason or the other can't carry one far into the world of beauty—that reason being perhaps that though you don't want comradership there you do want the possibility of comradership, and A cannot swallow B's mouthful by any possibility:…. and this exclusiveness (to maunder on) also attaches to the physical side of sex though not the least to the spiritual.”

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Letter 162, to Malcolm Darling, 1 December 1916
Selected Letters (1983-1985)

“Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think is creation's.”

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"The Raison d'Etre of Criticism in the Arts"
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)

“I went to our Theological College lately, Westcott House, and we had a sort of chat. He told me that without him it was impossible to understand the universe, and I came away having forgotten to reply that it did not occur to me to try to understand the universe. I must not run on like this so. Or rather what I mean is I have just finished the biography of my great aunt. Understanding, or partially understanding, her has been quite a large enough job.”

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Letter 411, to Lionel Trilling, 1 August 1955
Selected Letters (1983-1985)

“If God could tell the story of the Universe, the Universe would become fictitious.”

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E.M. Forster livre Aspects of the Novel

Source: Aspects of the Novel (1927), Chapter Three: People

“Why are pictures like this allowed?’ he suddenly cried. He had stopped in front of a colonial print in which the martyrdom of St Agatha was depicted with all the fervour that incompetence could command.
‘It’s only a saint,’ said Lady Peaslake, placidly raising her head.
‘How disgusting – and how ugly’
‘Yes, very. It’s Roman Catholic.”

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Albergo Empedocle
The Life to Come and other stories (1972)

“A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.”

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"Anonymity: An Enquiry"
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)

“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.”

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What I Believe (1938)

“N. B. this book and pensées not important and the temptation to mistake them for Creation must be resisted.”

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Source: Commonplace Book (1985), p. 155 (1943)

“All this fame and money, which have so thrilled me when they came to others, leave me cold when they come to me. I am not an ascetic, but I don't know what to do with them, and my daily life has never been so trying, and there is no one to fill it emotionally.”

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Letter 251, to Florence Barger, 23 December 1924
Selected Letters (1983-1985)

“Today 29-9-34 ion the garden, rockery side, looking up to the house where Bone was working, sky bluish, very gentle, I looked without theories or self consciousness. This happens very seldom, though I can prolong the delight if I prevent my engines from restarting.”

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Source: Commonplace Book (1985), p. 95

“Science, when applied to personal relationships, is always just wrong.”

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Letter 231, to W. J. H. Sprott, 28 June 1923
Selected Letters (1983-1985)

“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.”

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Letter 396, to Eric Fletcher, 9 July 1951
Selected Letters (1983-1985)

“Had she only realized that it is only hypocrites who cannot forgive hypocrisy, whereas those who search for truth are too conscious of the maze to be hard on others – than the bitter flow of her thoughts might have been stopped and the catastrophe averted. But it was not conceivable to her that he should forgive – or that she should accept forgiveness, for to her forgiveness meant a triumph of one person over another.”

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Albergo Empedocle
The Life to Come and other stories (1972)

“The more highly public life is organized the lower does its morality sink; the nations of today behave to each other worse than they ever did in the past, they cheat, rob, bully and bluff, make war without notice, and kill as many women and children as possible; whereas primitive tribes were at all events restrained by taboos.”

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What I Believe (1938)

“Peacefulness to be found in writing. Why do I not write every day? Partly because I feel I ought to write well and know I can't. But that is not a good enough reason for not writing, if it gains me poise & peace.”

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Source: Commonplace Book (1985), p. 219 (1960)

“All invitations must proceed from heaven perhaps; perhaps it is futile for men to initiate their own unity, they do but widen the gulfs between them by the attempt.”

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E.M. Forster livre A Passage to India

Source: A Passage to India (1924), Ch. 4

“I know very well how limited and how open to criticism, English freedom is. It is race-bound and it's class-bound. It means freedom for the Englishman, but not for the subject-races of his Empire. If you invite the average Englishman to share his liberties with the inhabitants of India or Kenya, he will reply, "Never," if he is a Tory, and "Not until I consider them worthy" if he is a Liberal.”

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"Liberty In England", Speech (June 21, 1935), reprinted in Abinger Harvest (1936).

“This conversation taught me that some of us can meet reality on this side of the grave. I do not envy them. Such adventures may profit the disembodied soul, but as long as I have flesh and blood I pray that my grossness preserve me. Our lower nature has its dreams. Mine is of a certain farm, windy but fruitful, half-way between the deserted moorland and the uninhabitable sea. Hither, at rare intervals, she should descend and he ascend, to shatter their spiritual communion by one caress.”

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The Rock
The Life to Come and other stories (1972)

“In these English farms, if anywhere, one might see life steadily and see it whole, group in one vision its transitoriness and its eternal youth, connect — connect without bitterness until all men are brothers.”

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E.M. Forster livre Howards End

Source: Howards End (1910), Ch. 33

“Naked I came into this world, naked I shall go out of it. And a very good thing too, for it reminds me that I am naked under my shirt, whatever its colour.”

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What I Believe (1938)

“His hand came nearer, his eyes danced round the room, which began to fill with a golden haze. He beckoned, and Clesant moved into his arms. Clesand had often been proud of his disease but never, never of his body, it had never occurred to him that he could provoke desire. This sudden revelation shattered him, he fell from his pedestal, but not alone, there was someone to cling to, broad shoulders, a sunburnt throat, lips that parted as they touched him to murmur – ‘And to hell with Woolacott’.”

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Dr Woolacott
The Life to Come and other stories (1972)

“The newspapers still talk about glory but the average man, thank God, has got rid of that illusion. It is a damned bore, with a stall mate as the most probable outcome, but one has to see it through, and see it through with the knowledge that whichever side wins, civilisation in Europe will be pipped for the next 30 years. Don't indulge in Romance here, Malcolm, or suppose that an era of jolly little nationalities is dawning. We shall be much too much occupied with pestilence and poverty to reconstruct.”

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Letter 136, to Malcolm Darling, 6 November 1914
Selected Letters (1983-1985)

“An efficiency-regime cannot be run without a few heroes stuck about it to carry off the dullness — much as plums have to be put into bad pudding to make it palatable.”

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What I Believe (1938)

“Hardship is vanishing, but so is style, and the two are more closely connected than the present generation supposes.”

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"Cambridge"
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)

“Probable that I am now better than most people and as good as I ever shall be at this game, and can therefore get to know anyone I wish, provided I am not physically repellent. And perhaps this is why personal relationships no longer seem to me a serious branch of study.”

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Source: Commonplace Book (1985), p. 45

“[Before the prostate operation] I feel gay and calm, but have an open mind as to whether I shall get through or not[. ] I don't say this to anyone else, but I love you too much to say anything but the truth. I don't feel afraid of anything and it is your love that has made me be like this. I hope to come back to you and everything and be as before, and I will try my best to do so.”

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Letter 311, to Robert J. Buckingham, 17 December 1935
Selected Letters (1983-1985)

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