Quotes from E.M. Forster

When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.

Sometimes I think too much fuss is made about marriage. Century after century of carnal embracement and we're still no nearer to understanding one another.

The crime of suicide lies rather in its disregard for the feelings of those whom we leave behind.

Words deserted him immediately. He could only speak when he was not asked to.

He educated Maurice, or rather his spirit educated Maurice's spirit, for they themselves became equal. Neither thought "Am I led; am I leading?" Love had caught him out of triviality and Maurice out of bewilderment in order that two imperfect souls might touch perfection.

It isn't possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.

It was not that ladies were inferior to men; it was that they were different. Their mission was to inspire others to achievement rather than to achieve themselves. Indirectly, by means of tact and a spotless name, a lady could accomplish much. But if she rushed into the fray herself she would be first censured, then despised, and finally ignored.

I'd far rather leave a thought behind me than a child. Other people can have children.

There was something better in life than this rub­bish, if only he could get to it—love—nobility—big spaces where passion clasped peace, spaces no science could reach, but they existed for ever, full of woods some of them, and arched with majestic sky and a friend. . .

To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it.

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

I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.

What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives? They have never entered into mine, but into yours, we thought--Haven't we all to struggle against life's daily greyness, against pettiness, against mechanical cheerfulness, against suspicion? I struggle by remembering my friends; others I have known by remembering some place--some beloved place or tree--we thought you one of these.

Why children?' he asked. 'Why always children? For love to end where it begins is far more beautiful, and Nature knows it.

At times he entertained the dream. Two men can defy the world.

It is thus, if there is any rule, that we ought to die--neither as victim nor as fanatic, but as the seafarer who can greet with an equal eye the deep that he is entering, and the shore that he must leave.

He knew that loneliness was poisoning him, so that he grew viler as well as more unhappy.

Then she lay on her back and gazed at the cloudless sky. Mr. Beebe, whose opinion of her rose daily, whispered to his niece that that was the proper way to behave if any little thing went wrong.

I suppose I shall have to live now

The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say "yesterday I was happy, today I am not.

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.

You told me once that we shall be judged by our intentions, not by our accomplishments. I thought it a grand remark. But we must intend to accomplish—not sit intending on a chair.

You talk as if a god had made the Machine," cried the other. "I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men. The Machine is much, but not everything.

All men are equal - all men, that is, who possess umbrellas.