Quotes from E.M. Forster

I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it—and I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil.

Lucy was slow to follow what people said, but quick enough to detect what they meant.

Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome "nerves" or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire. She

For all his culture, Cecil was an ascetic at heart, and nothing in his love became him like the leaving of it.

I don't believe in suiting my conversation to my company

The only relationship which Cecil conceived was feudal: that of protector and protected.... He daren't let a woman decide. He's the type who's kept Europe back for a thousand years. Every moment of his life he's forming you, telling you what's charming or amusing or ladylike, telling you what a man thinks womanly; and you, you all all women, listen to his voice instead of to your own.

Love must confirm an old relation rather than reveal a new one

And Leonard had reached the destination. He had visited the county of Surrey when darkness covered its amenities, and its cosy villas had re-entered ancient night. Every twelve hours this miracle happens, but he had troubled to go and see for himself.

I am a man, and have lived a man's past.

She was appallingly narrow, but her consciousness of wider things gave to her narrowness a pathetic charm.

I have myself to face a world which is tragic without becoming tragic myself.

She lowered her eyes a moment to the black abyss of the past.

Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them. By understanding George you may learn to understand yourself.

I love folklore and all festering superstitions.

I used to be so dreamy about a man's love as a girl, and think that, for good or evil, love must be the great thing. But it hasn't been; it has been itself a dream.

To them Howards End was a house; they could not know that to her it had been a spirit, for which she sought a spiritual heir.

Yes, awfully serious,' remarked Maurice, and rested his hand on Alec's shoulder, so that the fingers touched the back of the neck, doing this merely because he wished to do it, not for another reason.

The peace of the country was entering into her. It has no commerce with memory, and little with hope. Least of all is it concerned with the hopes of the next five minutes. It is the peace of the present, which passes understanding. Its murmur came "now," and "now" once more as they trod the gravel, and "now," as the moonlight fell upon their father's sword. They passed upstairs, kissed, and, and amidst the endless iterations fell asleep.

He took no interest in politics, which ruin the character and career, yet nothing can be achieved without them.

Love had caught him out of triviality and Maurice out of bewilderment in order that two imperfect souls might touch perfection.

The imponderable bloom, declared by a discredited philosophy to be the actual essence of intercourse, was rightly ignored by the Machine, just as the imponderable bloom of the grape was ignored by the manufacturers of artificial fruit. Something "good enough" had long since been accepted by our race.

The aims of battle and the fruits of conquest are never the same;

I want you to have your own thoughts even when I hold you in my arms

Then darkness rolled up again, the dark essay that is primeval but not eternal, and yields to its own painful dawn.