Quotes from E.M. Forster

He hadn't a God, he hadn't a lover – the two usual incentives to virtue.

Life´s a damn poor show.

He loved poetry--science was merely an acquisition, which he laid aside when unobserved like his European dress...

Durham, I love you." He laughed bitterly. "Expand the statement.

And now we shan't be parted no more, and that's finished.

O escritor americano Philip Roth, falecido neste maio de 2018, insistia que a literatura não é o "concurso de beleza moral" em que hoje se tenta transformá-la a golpes de politicamente correto, inclusão social e análogos.

Preachers or scientists may generalize, but we know that no generality is possible about those whom we love; not one heaven awaits them, not even one oblivion.

O colégio interno de] Sunnington foi a etapa seguinte na carreia de Maurice. (...) Tendo sido maltratado enquanto caloiro, maltratava outros que parecessem infelizes ou fracos, não porque fosse cruel, mas porque era o que se devia fazer. ------------------- p. 22, MAURICE, E.M.FORSTER

she reflected that it is impossible to foretell the future with any degree of accuracy, that it is impossible to rehearse life. A fault in the scenery, a face in the audience, an irruption of the audience on to the stage, and all our carefully planned gestures mean nothing, or mean too much.

I have shared with Alec,' he said after deep thought. 'Shared what?' 'All I have. Which includes my body.

Then he shouted: "India shall be a nation! No foreigners of any sort! Hindu and Moslem and Sikh and all shall be one! Hurrah! Hurrah for India! Hurrah! Hurrah!" India a nation! What an apotheosis! Last comer to the drab nineteenth-century sisterhood! Waddling in at this hour of the world to take her seat! She, whose only peer was the Holy Roman Empire, she shall rank with Guatemala and Belgium perhaps!

We may still contrive to raise three cheers for democracy, although at present she only deserves two.

a shamefaced world of precautions and barriers which may avert evil, but which do not seem to bring good...

He misliked the very word "interesting," connoting it with wasted energy and even with morbidity. Hard facts were enough for him.

I believe that in the last century men have developed the desire for work, and they must not starve it. It's a new desire. It goes with a great deal that's bad, but in itself it's good, and I hope that for women, too, 'not to work' will soon become as shocking as 'not to be married' was a hundred years ago.

A happy ending was imperative. I shouldn't have bothered to write otherwise. I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows, and in this sense Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood.

If Wilcoxes hadn't worked and died in England for thousands of years, you and I couldn't sit here without having our throats cut. There would be no trains, no ships to carry us literary people about in, no fields even. Just savagery. No--perhaps not even that. Without their spirit life might never have moved out of protoplasm. More and more do I refuse to draw my income and sneer at those who guarantee it.

But the lovers get away unpunished and consequently recommend crime.

Well, it is odd and sad that our minds should be such seed-beds, and we without power to choose the seed. But man is an odd, sad creature as yet, intent on pilfering the earth, and heedless of the growths within himself.

Ronny approved of religion as long as it endorsed the National Anthem, but he objected when it attempted to influence his life.

Tibby is moderately a dear now," said Helen. "There! I knew you'd say that in the end. Of course he's a dear.

And in time' – his voice rose – 'there will come a generation that had got beyond facts, beyond impressions, a generation absolutely colourless, a generation

acknowledged that Maurice had once lifted him out of aestheticism into the sun and wind of love.

But this place has wonderful powers." "What do you mean?" "I don't know." "Because I probably agree with you." "It kills what is dreadful and makes what is beautiful live.