The collection / 200 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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200 results · Page 7 of 9Play this collection ▷

01c. 1901 AD

A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.

E.M. Forster / quote

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02c. 1901 AD

I rather mistrust young men who slip into life gracefully.

E.M. Forster / quote

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03c. 1901 AD

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

E.M. Forster / quote

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04c. 1901 AD

Sensual and spiritual are not easy words to use; that there are, perhaps, not twoAphrodites, but one Aphrodite with a Janus face.

E.M. Forster / quote

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05c. 1901 AD

London was but a foretaste of this nomadic civilization which is altering human nature so profoundly, and throws upon personal relations a stress greater than they have ever borne before. Under cosmopolitanism, if it comes, we shall receive no help from the earth. Trees and meadows and mountains will only be a spectacle, and the binding force that once exercised on character must be entrusted to Love alone. May Love be equal to the task!

E.M. Forster / quote

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06c. 1901 AD

Oh, poor, poor fellow!' said Mrs. Elliot with a remorse that was sincere, though her congratulations would not have been.

E.M. Forster / quote

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07c. 1901 AD

A slow nature such as Maurice's appears insensitive, for it needs time even to feel. Its instinct is to assume that nothing either for good or evil has happened, and to resist the invader. Once gripped, it feels acutely, and its sensations in love are particularly profound. Given time, it can know and impart ecstasy; given time, it can sink to the heart of Hell.

E.M. Forster / quote

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08c. 1901 AD

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

E.M. Forster / quote

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09c. 1901 AD

He built up a situation that was far enough from the truth. It never occurred to him that Helen was to blame. He forgot the intensity of their talk, the charm that had been lent him by sincerity, the magic of Oniton under darkness and of the whispering river. Helen loved the absolute. Leonard had been ruined absolutely, and had appeared to her as a man apart, isolated from the world. A real man, who cared for adventure and beauty, who desired to live decently and pay his way, who could have travelled more gloriously through life than the Juggernaut car that was crushing him.

E.M. Forster / quote

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10c. 1901 AD

-while beyond the barrier Maurice wandered, the wrong words on his lips and the wrong desires in his heart, and his arms full of air.

E.M. Forster / quote

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11c. 1901 AD

He had no racial feeling—not because he was superior to his brother civilians, but because he had matured in a different atmosphere, where the herd instinct does not flourish.

E.M. Forster / quote

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12c. 1901 AD

Fed by neither Heaven nor by Earth he was going forward . . . He hadn't a God or a lover--the two usual incentives to virtue. But on he struggled with his back to ease, because dignity demanded it. There was no one to watch him, nor did he watch himself, but struggles like his are the supreme achievements of humanity, and surpass any legends about Heavan.

E.M. Forster / quote

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13c. 1901 AD

Some reviews give pain. This is regrettable, but no author has the right to whine. He was not obliged to be an author. He invited publicity, and he must take the publicity that comes along.

E.M. Forster / quote

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14c. 1901 AD

For the dead, who seem to take away so much, really take with them nothing that is ours.

E.M. Forster / quote

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15c. 1901 AD

In every remark he found a meaning, but not always the true meaning, and his life, though vivid, was largely a dream.

E.M. Forster / quote

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16c. 1901 AD

Did you ever dream you had a friend, Alec? Someone to last your whole life and you his. I suppose such a thing can’t really happen outside sleep.

E.M. Forster / quote

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17c. 1901 AD

Travel was a species of warfare.

E.M. Forster / quote

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18c. 1901 AD

Naked I came into the world, naked I shall go out of it! And a very good thing too, for it reminds me that I am naked under my shirt, whatever its colour.

E.M. Forster / quote

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19c. 1901 AD

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

E.M. Forster / quote

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20c. 1901 AD

... and someone he scarcely knew moved towards him and knelt beside him and whispered, 'Sir, was you calling out for me? ... Sir, I know ... I know,' and touched him.

E.M. Forster / quote

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21c. 1901 AD

... I since cricket match do long to talk with one of my arms around you, then place both arms round you and share with you, the above now seems sweeter to me than words can say.

E.M. Forster / quote

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22c. 1901 AD

Gray clouds were charging across tissues of white, which stretched and shredded and tore slowly, until through their final layers there gleamed a hint of the disappearing blue. Summer was retreating. The wind roared, the trees groaned, yet the noise seemed insufficient for those vast operations in heaven. The weather was breaking up, breaking, broken, and it is a sense of the fit rather than of the supernatural that equips such crises with the salvos of angelic artillery.

E.M. Forster / quote

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23c. 1901 AD

So never give in,” continued the girl, and restated again and again the vague yet convincing plea that the Invisible lodges against the Visible. Her excitement grew as she tried to cut the rope that fastened Leonard to the earth. Woven of bitter experience, it resisted her. Presently the waitress entered and gave her a letter from Margaret. Another note, addressed to Leonard, was inside. They read them, listening to the murmurings of the river.

E.M. Forster / quote

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24c. 1901 AD

Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.

E.M. Forster / quote

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