Quotes from E.M. Forster

For he believed that women revere men for their manliness.

M]en were not gods after all, but as human and clumsy as girls; even men might suffer from unexplained desires, and need help... the weakness of men was a truth unfamiliar, but she had surmised it at Florence.

What does one want with dusty economic books, which have made the world no better, ...

T]here is only one perfect view--the view of the sky straight over our heads, and that all these views on earth are but bungled copies of it.... views are really crowds--crowds of trees and houses and hills... [f]or a crowd is more than the people who make it up. Something gets added to it.

It is pleasant to analyse feelings while they are still only feelings, and unembodied in the social fabric

at the end there was presented to the girl the complete picture of a cheerless, loveless world in which the young rush to destruction until they learn better—a shamefaced world of precautions and barriers which may avert evil, but which do not seem to bring good

There are some chaps who are no good for anything but books; I plead guilty to being such a chap. —Cecil Vyse

I wish that Cecil had not turned so cynical about women. He has, for the second time, quite altered. Why will men have theories about women? I haven't any about men.

Unless a sentence paid a few compliments to Justice and Morality in passing, its grammar wounded their ears and paralysed their minds.

The Machine is the friend of ideas and the enemy of superstition: the Machine is omnipotent, eternal; blessed is the Machine.

Helen in those days was over-interested in the subconscious self. She exaggerated the Push and Judy aspect of life, and spoke of mankind as puppets, whom an invisible showman twitches into love and war. Margaret pointed out that if she dwell on this she, too, would eliminate the personal

In our father's house are many mansions, they taught, and there alone will the incompatible multitudes of mankind be welcomed and soothed. Not one shall be turned away by the servants on that verandah, be he black or white, not one shall be kept standing who approaches with a loving heart. And why should the divine hospitality cease here? Consider, with all reverence, the monkeys. May there not be a mansion for the monkeys also?

I mean the idea that women are always thinking of men. If a girl breaks off her engagement, everyone says: "Oh, she had someone else in her mind; she hopes to get someone else." It's disgusting, brutal! As if a girl can't break it off for the sake of freedom.

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

I must get away, ever so far. I must know my own mind and where I want to go.

So dark was the afternoon that some of the lights had been turned on inside, and the great building suggested a tomb, miraculously illuminated by spirits of the dead.

The sky settles everything.

marry him; it is one of the moments for which the world was made.

As you came through the wood I saw that nothing else mattered. I called. I wanted to live and have my chance of joy.

und verstand nichts, nur dass der Mensch geschaffen worden ist, ohne Hilfe des Himmels Schmerzen und Einsamkeit zu erleiden.

I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man's pleasure when they come a cropper.

For a moment the visible world faded away, and memories and emotions alone seemed real.

Es läuft also darauf hinaus. Es hat immer Leute wie mich gegeben, und es wird sie weiterhin geben und meistens sind sie verfolgt worden.

He understood nothing except that man has been created to feel pain and loneliness without help from heaven.