Quotes from E. M. Forster

Neanderthal man listened to stories, if one may judge by the shape of his skull.

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.

The traveller who has gone to Italy to study the tactile values of Giotto, or the corruption of the Papacy, may return remembering nothing but the blue sky and the men and women who live under it.

Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.

All men are equal — all men, that is to say, who possess umbrellas.

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

One can run away from women, turn them out, or give in to them. No fourth course.

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.

The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists.

Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work.

I am certainly an ought and not a must.

History develops, art stands still.

Two cheers for Democracy; one because it admits variety, and two because it permits criticism.

So, two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism.

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

I have almost completed a long novel, but it is unpublishable until my death and England's.

At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.

If there is on earth a house with many mansions, it is the house of words.

Faith to my mind is a stiffening process a sort of mental starch.

I would rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave.

...the true spirit of gastronomic joylessness. Porridge fills the Englishman up, and prunes clear him out.

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.