Quotes from E.M. Forster

You and I and the Wilcoxes stand upon money as upon islands. It is so firm beneath our feet that we forget its very existence. It's only when we see some one near us tottering that we realise all that an independent income means. Last night, when we were talking up here round the fire, I began to think that the very soul of the world is economic, and that the lowest abyss is not the absence of love, but the absence of coin.

Much love. Modified love to Tibby. Love to Aunt Juley; how good of her to come and keep you company, but what a bore.

He supposed her 'as clever as they make 'em', but no more, not realizing that she was penetrating to the depths of his soul, and approving of what she found there.

Did he at all know where he wanted to live? Tibby didn't know that he did know. Did he at all know what he wanted to do? He was equally uncertain, but when pressed remarked that he should prefer to be quite free of any profession.

Beautiful?" said Miss Bartlett, puzzled at the word. "Are not beauty and delicacy the same?

The idealism and the brutality that ran through boyhood had joined at last, and twined into love.

She strove in vain against the echoing walls of their civility.

You mustn't put off what you think right," said Hamidullah. "That is why India is in such a plight, because we put off things.

He mourned his wife more sincerely because he mourned her seldom.

I do not want my voice to go out into the air while my heart is sinking.

Mr. Fielding, no one can ever realize how much kindness we Indians need, we do not even realize it ourselves. But we know when it has been given. We do not forget, though we may seem to. Kindness, more kindness, and even after that more kindness. I assure you it is the only hope.

No, it is better not to risk a second interview. I shall always look back on this talk with you as one of the finest things in my life. Really. I mean this. We can never repeat. It has done me real good, and there we had better leave it." "That's rather a sad view of life, surely." "Things so often get spoiled." "I know," flashed Helen. "But people don't.

You could call your cousin a shit if you liked, but not an eunuch. Rotten style!

I can't be sacked from my job, because my job's Education. I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals. It's the only thing I do believe in. At Government College, I mix it up with trigonometry, and so on. When I'm a saddhu, I shall mix it up with something else.

Look at this evening. Cousin Kate! Imagine, Cousin Kate! But where have you been off to? Did you succeed in catching the moon in the Ganges?

THE SIGNORA HAD NO business to do it," said Miss Bartlett, "no business at all. She promised us south rooms with a view close together, instead of which here are north rooms, looking into a court-yard, and a long way apart. Oh, Lucy!

Plenty of Indians travel light too--saddhus and such. It's one of the things I admire about your country. Any man can travel light until he has a wife or children. That's part of my case against marriage. I'm a holy man minus the holiness.

He did not want Romance to collide with the Porphyrion, still less with Jacky, and people with fuller, happier lives are slow to understand this. To the Schlegels, as to the undergraduate, he was an interesting creature, of whom they wanted to see more. But they to him were denizens of Romance, who must keep to the corner he had assigned them, pictures that must not walk out of their frames.

He was not as courteous as the average rich man, nor as intelligent, nor as healthy, nor as lovable. His mind and his body had been alike underfed, because he was poor, and because he was modern they were always craving better food.

They trusted each other, although they were going to part, perhaps because they were going to part.

My conviction," says the mystic, "gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it," and they had agreed that there was something beyond life's daily grey.

How annoyed I am with Society for wasting my time by making homosexuality criminal. The subterfuges, the self-consciousness that might have been avoided

I don't want your patronage. I don't want your tea. I was quite happy. What do you want to unsettle me for?

Life is a mysterious business.