EFE.M. Forster

200 collected words

E.M. Forster

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Quotations and sayings

01Undated

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

E.M. Forster / quote

02Undated

What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.

E.M. Forster / quote

03Undated

A book is a mirror; if an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to peer out.

E.M. Forster / quote

04Undated

Margaret had often wondered at the disturbance that takes place in the world's waters when Love, who seems so tiny a pebble, slips in. Whom does Love concern beyond the beloved and the lover? Yet his impact deluges a hundred shores,

E.M. Forster / quote

05Undated

Was Mrs. Wilcox one of the unsatisfactory people- there are many of them- who dangle intimacy and then withdraw it? They evoke our interests and affections, and keep the life of the spirit dawdling around them. Then they withdraw. When physical passion is involved, there is a definite name for such behaviour- flirting- and if carried far enough, it is punishable by law. But no law- not public opinion, even- punishes those who coquette with friendship, though the dull ache that they inflict, the sense of misdirected effort and exhaustion, may be as intolerable. Was she one of these?

E.M. Forster / quote

06Undated

Why can't we be friends now?" said the other, holding him affectionately. "It's what I want. It's what you want." But the horses didn't want it — they swerved apart: the earth didn't want it, sending up rocks through which riders must pass single file; the temple, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they emerged from the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn't want it, they said in their hundred voices "No, not yet," and the sky said "No, not there.

E.M. Forster / quote

07Undated

He had a theory that musicians are incredibly complex, and know far less than other artists what they want and what they are; that they puzzle themselves as well as their friends; that their psychology is a modern development, and has not yet been understood.

E.M. Forster / quote

08Undated

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

E.M. Forster / quote

09Undated

Pity, if one can generalize, is at the bottom of woman. When men like us, it is for our better qualities, and however tender their liking, we dare not be unworthy of it, or they will quietly let us go. But unworthiness stimulates woman. It brings out her deeper nature, for good or for evil.

E.M. Forster / quote

10Undated

Have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet at the same time - beautiful?

E.M. Forster / quote

11Undated

My father says that there 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.

E.M. Forster / quote

12Undated

Beauty ought to look a little surprised: it is the emotion that best suits her face.... The beauty who does not look surprised, who accepts her position as her due—she reminds us too much of a prima donna.

E.M. Forster / quote

13Undated

There stood a young man who had the figure of a Greek athlete and the face of an English one...Just where he began to be beautiful the clothes started.

E.M. Forster / quote

14Undated

But the body is deeper than the soul and its secrets inscrutable.

E.M. Forster / quote

15Undated

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 / quote

16Undated

To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art.

E.M. Forster / quote

17Undated

If you introduce the human figure you at once arouse either disgust or desire.

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18Undated

Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wishes to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time.

E.M. Forster / quote

19Undated

I did not fear that I might tread upon a live rail and be killed. I feared something far more intangible-doing what was not contemplated by the Machine. Then I said to myself, “Man is the measure”, and I went, and after many visits I found an opening.

E.M. Forster / quote

20Undated

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

E.M. Forster / quote

21Undated

I'm afraid that in nine cases out of ten Nature pulls one way and human nature another.

E.M. Forster / quote

22Undated

I believed in a return to Nature once. But how can we return to Nature when we have never been with her? Today, I believe that we must discover Nature. After many conquests we shall attain simplicity. It is our heritage.

E.M. Forster / quote

23Undated

An acquaintance had become a lover, might become a husband, but would retain all that she had noted in the acquaintance; and love must confirm an old relation rather than reveal a new one.

E.M. Forster / quote

24Undated

The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected. The commonplace person begins to play, and shoots into the empyrean without effort, whilst we look up, marvelling how he has escaped us, and thinking how we could worship him and love him, would he but translate his visions into human words, and his experiences into human actions. Perhaps he cannot; certainly he does not, or does so very seldom.

E.M. Forster / quote