E. M. Forster Quotes

291 Sourced Quotes

Railway termini. They are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return.

E. M. Forster
The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then queen died of grief is a plot.

E. M. Forster
But this time I'm not to blame; I want you to believe that. I simply slipped into those violets. No, I want to be really truthful. I am a little to blame. The sky, you know, was gold, and the ground all blue, and for a moment he looked like some one in a book.

E. M. Forster
Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate. Adventures do occur, but not punctually.

E. M. Forster
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.

E. M. Forster
What puzzles me most is your criticism that he showed 'no sense of engagement'. I haven't met the expression before, and feel bound to comment on its totalitarian tang. Engagement not with the truth as the speaker apprehends it, but with the alleged opinion of the majority of listeners.

E. M. Forster
I have said that each aspect of the novel demands a different quality of the reader. Well, the prophetic aspect demands two qualities: humility and the suspension of the sense of humour.

E. M. Forster
The sort of poetry I seek resides in objects man can't touch.

E. M. Forster
I think you're beautiful, the only beautiful person I've ever seen. I love your voice and everything to do with you, down to your clothes or the room you are sitting in. I adore you.

E. M. Forster
Like all gossip—it's merely one of those half-alive things that try to crowd out real life.

E. M. Forster
We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet.

E. M. Forster
It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness, to think that a thousand square miles are a thousand times more wonderful than one square mile, and that a million square miles are almost the same as heaven.

E. M. Forster
The echo began in some indescribable way to undermine her hold on life. Coming at a moment when she chanced to be fatigued, it had managed to murmur, "Pathos, piety, courage—they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value." If one had spoken vileness in that place, or quoted lofty poetry, the [echo's] comment would have been the same — "Ou-boum."

E. M. Forster
Love felt and returned, love which our bodies exact and our hearts have transfigured, love which is the most real thing that we shall ever meet, reappeared now as the world's enemy, and she must stifle it.

E. M. Forster
One can run away from women, turn them out, or give in to them. No fourth course.

E. M. Forster
Had she only realized that it is only hypocrites who cannot forgive hypocrisy, whereas those who search for truth are too conscious of the maze to be hard on others – than the bitter flow of her thoughts might have been stopped and the catastrophe averted. But it was not conceivable to her that he should forgive – or that she should accept forgiveness, for to her forgiveness meant a triumph of one person over another.

E. M. Forster
I never expect anything to happen now, and so I am never disappointed. You would be surprised to know what my great events are. Going to the theatre yesterday, talking to you now — I don't suppose I shall ever meet anything greater. I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it — and I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil. I don't die — I don't fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there. You are quite right; life to me is just a spectacle, which — thank God, and thank Italy, and thank you — is now more beautiful and heartening than it has ever been before.

E. M. Forster
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.

E. M. Forster
All this fame and money, which have so thrilled me when they came to others, leave me cold when they come to me. I am not an ascetic, but I don't know what to do with them, and my daily life has never been so trying, and there is no one to fill it emotionally.

E. M. Forster
It was unbearable, and he thought again, 'How unhappy I am!' and became happier.

E. M. Forster
All men are equal—all men, that is to say, who possess umbrellas.

E. M. Forster
Nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to merge in something else.

E. M. Forster
At the moment they vanished they were everywhere, the cool benediction of the night descended, the stars sparkled, and the whole universe was a hill.

E. M. Forster
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.

E. M. Forster
Of course he despised the world as a whole; every thoughtful man should; it is almost a test of refinement.

E. M. Forster
While her lips talked culture, her heart was planning to invite him to tea

E. M. Forster
The fact is we can only love what we know personally. And we cannot know much. In public affairs, in the rebuilding of civilization, something less dramatic and emotional is needed, namely tolerance.

E. M. Forster
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.

E. M. Forster
Passion does not blind. No. Passion is sanity, and the woman you love, she is the only person you will ever really understand.

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

E. M. Forster