Quotes About Society

He was a good average Englishman who had slipped.

For if the will can overlap class, civilization as we have made it will go to pieces.

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

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.

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.

Girls like Lucy were charming to look at, but Mr. Beebe was, from rather profound reasons, somewhat chilly in his attitude towards the other sex, and preferred to be interested rather than enthralled.

To alter poor people until they became exactly like the people who were not so poor

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.

Ser homossexual num ambiente britânico formal e legalmente avesso ao que era visto como um desvio da norma levou sem dúvida Forster a dar ao corpo seu devido valor. Não escondeu suas preferências sexuais dos amigos próximos mas nunca as assumiu publicamente; manteve um longo relacionamento com um homem casado embora ele mesmo, Forster... vivesse sozinho — ou com a mãe.

Alec no era un héroe ni un dios, sino un hombre inmerso en una sociedad como él, para el que el mar y los bosques y la fresca brisa y el sol no preparaban ninguna apoteosis.

This famous building had arisen, that was doomed. To-day Whitehall had been transformed; it would be the turn of Regent Street to-morrow. And month by month the roads smelt more strongly of petrol, and were more difficult to cross, and human beings heard each other speak with greater difficulty, breathed less of the air, and saw less of the sky. Nature withdrew; the leaves were falling by midsummer; the sun shone through dirt with an admired obscurity.

He is the sort who are all right so long as they keep to things—books, pictures—but kill when they come to people.

Creamos la Máquina para que actuase según nuestra voluntad, pero ya no somos capaces de hacer que la Máquina se someta a ella. Nos ha robado el sentido del espacio y el sentido del tacto, ha disuelto las relaciones humanas y ha reducido el amor a un mero acto carnal, ha paralizado nuestros cuerpos y nuestra voluntad y ahora nos conmina a adorarla. La Máquina se desarrolla, pero no a nuestro servicio.

Nor am I concerned with duty. I'm concerned with the characters of various people whom we know, and how, things being as they are, things may be made a little better.

Granted the exceptions, he agreed that all Englishwomen are haughty and venal.

To speak against London is no longer fashionable. The earth as an artistic cult has had its day, and the literature of the near future will probably ignore the country and seek inspiration from the town.

for man is so made that he cannot remember long without a symbol; he wished there was a society, a kind of friendship office, where the marriage of true minds could be registered.

True socialism is based not on equality of income or character, but on the equality of manners.

I shall stick to it," she continued, smiling. "I am not saying it to educate you; it is what I really think. 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.

Contra a minha vontade, tornei-me normal. Não consigo evitá-lo.»

the actual deed of sex seemed to him unimaginative, and best veiled in night. Between men it is inexcusable, between man and woman it may be practised since nature and society approve, but never discussed nor vaunted.

People lost their humanity, and took values as arbitrary as those in a pack of playing-cards.

They had all passed up that narrow, rich staircase at Wickham Place to some ample room, whither he could never follow them, not if he read for ten hours a day. Oh, it was no good, this continual aspiration. Some are born cultured; the rest had better go in for whatever comes easy. To see life steadily and to see it whole was not for the likes of him.