Quotes from E.M. Forster

Love was an emotion through which you occasionally enjoyed yourself. It could not do things.

The melody rose, unprofitably magical. It broke; it was resumed broken, not marching once from the cradle to the grave. The sadness of the incomplete—the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art—throbbed in its disjected phrases, and made the nerves of the audience throb. Not thus had she played on the little draped piano at the Bertolini, and "Too much Schumann" was not the remark that Mr. Beebe had passed to himself when she returned.

It was the hour of unreality—the hour, that is, when unfamiliar things are real.

She walked about disdainfully, unwilling to be enthusiastic over monuments of uncertain authorship or date.

When real things are so wonderful, what is the point of pretending?

Of all means to regeneration, Remorse is surely the most wasteful.

it was English, and the wych-elm that she saw from the window was an English tree. No report had prepared her for its peculiar glory. It was neither warrior, nor lover, nor god; in none of these roles do the English excel. It was a comrade bending over the house, strength and adventure in its roots, but in its utmost fingers tenderness, and the girth, that a dozen men could not have spanned, became in the end evanescent, till pale bud clusters seemed to float in the air. It was a comrade.

The feudal ownership of land did bring dignity, whereas the modern ownership of movables is reducing us again to a nomadic horde. We are reverting to the civilisation of luggage, and historians of the future will note how the middle classes accreted possessions without taking root in the earth, and may find in this the secret of their imaginative poverty.

No, mother; no. She was really keen on Italy. This travel is quite a crisis for her." He found the situation full of whimsical romance: there was something half attractive, half repellent in the thought of this vulgar woman journeying to places he loved and revered. Why should she not be transfigured? The same had happened to the Goths.

I cannot help thinking that there is something to admire in every one, even if you do not approve of them.

But man is an odd, sad creature as yet, intent on pilfering the earth, and heedless of the growths within himself. He cannot be bored about psychology. He leaves it to the specialist, which is as if he should leave his dinner to be eaten by a steam-engine. He cannot be bothered to digest his own soul.

Italy is such a delightful place to live in if you happen to be a man. There one may enjoy that exquisite luxury of Socialism — that true Socialism which is based not on equality of income or character, but on the equality of manners.

It all turns on affection now," said Margaret. "Affection. Don't you see?... And affection, when reciprocated, gives rights. Put that down in your notebook, Mr. Mansbridge. It's a useful formula.

Athletes, he believed, were simple, straightforward people, cruel and brutal if you like, but never petty. They knocked you down and hurt you, and then went on their way rejoicing.

Scheherazade avoided her fate because she knew how to wield the weapon of suspense –the only literary tool that has any effect upon tyrants and savages.

He never retorted that the artist is not a bricklayer at all, but a horseman whose business it is to catch Pegasus at once, not to practise for him by mounting tamer colts. This is hard, hot and generally ungraceful work, but it is not drudgery. For drudgery is not art, and cannot lead to it.

You do admit that, if wealth was divided up equally, in a few years there would be rich and poor again just the same. The hard-working man would come to the top, the wastrel sink to the bottom. - Every one admits that. - Your Socialists don't. - My Socialists do. Yours mayn't; but I strongly suspect yours of being not Socialists, but ninepins, which you have constructed for your own amusement. I can't imagine any living creature who would bowl over quite so easily.

It happened like this, if it happened at all. I would rather go up to heaven by myself than be pushed by cherubs.

Live in fragments no longer, only connect.

This constant reference to genius is another characteristic of the pseudo-scholar. He loves mentioning genius, because the sound of the word exempts him from discovering its meaning.

Love was so unlike the article served up in books: the joy, though genuine, was different; the mystery an unexpected mystery.

An engagement is so potent a thing that sooner or later it reduces all who speak of it to this state of cheerful awe.

When they parted it was in the ordinary way: neither had an impulse to say anything special. The whole day had been ordinary. Yet it had never come before either of them, nor was it to be repeated.

He has dreams—not exactly spiritual dreams: but dreams of the tangible and the actual: robust dreams, which take him, not to heaven, but another earth.