E. M. Forster Quotes

291 Sourced Quotes

Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish! How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?

E. M. Forster
I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.

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

E. M. Forster
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.

E. M. Forster
There has been, is, and always will be every conceivable type of person.

E. M. Forster
Passion should believe itself irresistible. It should forget civility and consideration and all the other curses of a refined nature. Above all, it should never ask for leave where there is a right of way.

E. M. Forster
He had shown her all the workings of his soul, mistaking this for love.

E. M. Forster
Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.

E. M. Forster
Death is nothing if one can approach it as such. I was just a tiny night-light, suffocated in its own wax, and on the point of expiring.

E. M. Forster
Where there is officialism every human relationship suffers.

E. M. Forster
Characters must not brood too long. They must not waste time running up and down ladders in their own insides.

E. M. Forster
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.

E. M. Forster
I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I'd like to be.

E. M. Forster
N. B. this book and pensées not important and the temptation to mistake them for Creation must be resisted.
N.B. (Nota Bene) is used in writing to indicate that something is important, and that the reader should take notice of it.

E. M. Forster
Personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever and not this outer life of telegrams and anger.

E. M. Forster
I can only do what's easy. I can only entice and be enticed. I can't, and won't, attempt difficult relations. If I marry it will either be a man who's strong enough to boss me or whom I'm strong enough to boss. So I shan't ever marry, for there aren't such men. And Heaven help any one whom I do marry, for I shall certainly run away from him before you can say 'Jack Robinson.

E. M. Forster
She only felt that the candle would burn better, the packing go easier, the world be happier, if she could give and receive some human love.

E. M. Forster
I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals.

E. M. Forster
The sadness of the incomplete, the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art.

E. M. Forster
He had known so much about her once -what she thought, how she felt, the reasons for her actions. And now he only knew that he loved her, and all the other knowledge seemed passing from him just as he needed it most.

E. M. Forster
Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.

E. M. Forster
Our final experience, like our first, is conjectural. We move between two darknesses.

E. M. Forster
I won't be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult.

E. M. Forster
He was obliged however to throw over Christianity. Those who base their conduct upon what they are rather than upon what they ought to be, always must throw it over in the end....

E. M. Forster
He was passionately in love with her; therefore she could do exactly as she liked. 'It mayn't be heaven below,' she thought, 'but it's better than Charles.'

E. M. Forster
It makes a difference doesn't it, whether we fully fence ourselves in, or whether we are fenced out by the barriers of others?

E. M. Forster
I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

E. M. Forster
Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.

E. M. Forster
It is so difficult – at least, I find it difficult – to understand people who speak the truth.

E. M. Forster
When love flies it is remembered not as love but as something else.

E. M. Forster