Quotes from E. M. Forster

There are moments when the inner life actually 'pays,' when years of self-scrutiny, conducted for no ulterior motive, are suddenly of practical use.

In the novel we can know people perfectly, and, apart from the general pleasure of reading, we can find here a compensation for their dimness in life.

'A friend,' he repeated, sentimental suddenly. 'Someone to last your whole life and you his. I suppose such a thing can't really happen outside sleep.'

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

Life - No, I've nothing to teach you about it for the moment. May be writing about it another week.

Humility is a quality for which I have only a limited admiration. In many phases of life it is a great mistake and degenerates into defensiveness or hypocrisy.

Happiness in the ordinary sense is not what one needs in life, though one is right to aim at it. The true satisfaction is to come through, and see those whom one lives come through.

Personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever, and not this outer life of telegrams and anger.

The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish!

Do not be proud of your inconsistency. It is a pity, it is a pity that we should be equipped like this. It is a pity that Man cannot be at the same time impressive and truthful.

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.

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

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

Characters must not brood too long. They must not waste time running up and down ladders in their own insides.

The fact is we can only love what we know personally. And we cannot know much. In public affairs, in the rebuilding of civilization, something less dramatic and emotional is needed, namely tolerance.

Oxford is Oxford: not a mere receptacle for youth, like Cambridge. Perhaps it wants its inmates to love it rather than to love one another.

England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.

Beauty ought to look a little surprised: it is the emotion that best suits her face. The beauty who does not look surprised, who accepts her position as her due - she reminds us too much of a prima donna.

Only a struggle twists sentimentality and lust together into love.

Love is always being given where it is not required.

When I think of what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love; it is one of the moments for which the world was made.

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

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.