E. M. Forster Quotes - Page 11

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One's favorite book is as elusive as one's favorite pudding.

E. M. Forster

Book, Taste, Pudding

16 Copy quote
Paganism is infectious, more infectious than diphtheria or piety.

E. M. Forster

Literature, Paganism, Piety

E. M. Forster (2016). “A Room With A View: England Literature”, p.133, 谷月社

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Our easiest approach to a definition of any aspect of fiction is always by considering the sort of demand it makes on the reader. Curiosity for the story, human feelings and a sense of value for the characters, intelligence and memory for the plot. What does fantasy ask of us? It asks us to pay something extra.

E. M. Forster

Memories, Character, Empathy

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Culture had worked in her own case, but during the last few weeks she had doubted whether it humanized the majority, so wide and so widening is the gulf that stretches between the natural and the philosophic man, so many the good chaps who are wrecked in trying to cross it.

E. M. Forster

Men, Trying, Majority

E.M. Forster “Howards End”, Рипол Классик

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Some leave our life with tears, others with an insane frigidity; Mrs. Wilcox had taken the middle course, which only rarer natures can pursue. She had kept proportion. She had told a little of her grim secret to her friends, but not too much; she had shut up her heart--almost, but not entirely. It is thus, if there is any rule, that we ought to die--neither as victim nor as fanatic, but as the seafarer who can greet with an equal eye the deep that he is entering, and the shore that he must leave.

E. M. Forster

Taken, Heart, Eye

E. M. Forster (2016). “Howards End: England Literature”, p.86, 谷月社

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This element of surprise or mystery — the detective element as it is sometimes rather emptily called — is of great importance in a plot. It occurs through a suspension of the time-sequence; a mystery is a pocket in time, and it occurs crudely, as in "Why did the queen die?" and more subtly in half-explained gestures and words, the true meaning of which only dawns pages ahead. Mystery is essential to a plot, and cannot be appreciated without intelligence.

E. M. Forster

Queens, Marching On, Appreciate

"Aspects Of the Novel".

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If God could tell the story of the Universe, the Universe would become fictitious.

E. M. Forster

Stories, Ifs, Universe

E. M. Forster (2010). “Aspects of the Novel”, p.87, RosettaBooks

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A novelist can shift view-point if it comes off. ... Indeed, this power to expand and contract perception (of which the shifting view-point is a symptom), this right to intermittent knowledge - I find one of the great advantages of the novel-form ... this intermittence lends in the long run variety and colour to the experiences we receive.

E. M. Forster

Running, Views, Long

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Let us think of people as starting life with an experience they forget and ending it with one which they anticipate but cannot understand.

E. M. Forster

Thinking, People, Forget

E. M. Forster (2010). “Aspects of the Novel”, p.76, RosettaBooks

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Only people who have been allowed to practise freedom can have the grown-up look in their eyes.

E. M. Forster

Eye, People, Looks

E.M. Forster (1951). “Two Cheers for Democracy”

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Our final experience, like our first, is conjectural. We move between two darkness's.

E. M. Forster

Moving, Two, Darkness

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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.

E. M. Forster

Falling In Love, Moving, Fate

E. M. Forster (2012). “Where Angels Fear to Tread”, p.96, Courier Corporation

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For a wonderful physical tie binds the parents to the children; and - by some sad, strange irony - it does not bind us children to our parents. For if it did, if we could answer their love not with gratitude but with equal love, life would lose much of its pathos and much of its squalor, and we might be wonderfully happy.

E. M. Forster

Gratitude, Children, Love Life

E. M. Forster (2015). “Where Angels Fear to Tread”, p.109, Booklassic

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I have almost completed a long novel, but it is unpublishable until my death and England's.

E. M. Forster

Long, England, Novel

"E. M. Forster: A New Life". Book by Wendy Moffat, p. 174, April 4, 2011.

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Letters have to pass two tests before they can be classed as good: they must express the personality both of the writer and of the recipient.

E. M. Forster

Two, Personality, Letters

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Man has to pick up the use of his functions as he goes along- especially the function of Love.

E. M. Forster

Men, Use, Function

E.M. Forster (2012). “A Room with a View”, p.166, Courier Corporation

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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

Book, Long, Criticism

and Related Writings (1974) p. 129

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I do not believe in Belief.

E. M. Forster

Believe, Belief

1951 Two Cheers for Democracy,'What I Believe'.

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Take an old man's word; there's nothing worse than a muddle in all the world. It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror - on the things that I might have avoided. We can help one another but little. I used to think I could teach young people the whole of life, but I know better now, and all my teaching of George has come down to this: beware of muddle.

E. M. Forster

Teaching, Fate, Men

E.M. Forster (2016). “A Room With a View (Diversion Classics)”, p.224, Diversion Books

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

E. M. Forster

Sympathy, Congratulations, Sincere

E. M. Forster (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)”, p.278, Delphi Classics

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Men were not gods after all, but as human and as clumsy as girls.

E. M. Forster

Girl, Men, Room With A View

E.M. Forster (2012). “A Room with a View”, p.125, Courier Corporation

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How can the mind take hold of such a country? Generations of invaders have tried, but they remain in exile. The important towns they build are only retreats, their quarrels the malaise of men who cannot find their way home. India knows of their trouble. She knows of the whole world's trouble, to its uttermost depth. She calls "Come" through her hundred mouths, through objects ridiculous and august. But come to what? She has never defined. She is not a promise, only an appeal.

E. M. Forster

Country, Home, Men

E. M. Forster (2010). “A Passage to India”, p.136, RosettaBooks

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I am a Jane Austenite, and therefore slightly imbecile about Jane Austen. My fatuous expression, and airs of personal immunity-how ill they sit on the face, say,of a Stevensonian! But Jane Austen is so different. She is my favourite author! I read and reread, the mouth open and the mind closed. Shut up in measureless content, I greet her by the name of most kind hostess, while criticism slumbers.

E. M. Forster

Air, Expression, Names

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In Europe life retreats out of the cold, and exquisite fireside myths have resulted—Balder, Persephone—but [in India] the retreat is from the source of life, the treacherous sun, and no poetry adorns it because disillusionment cannot be beautiful. Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form, and India fails to accommodate them.

E. M. Forster

Beautiful, Men, August

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In the creative state a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious, and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing with his normal experiences and out of the mixture he makes a work of art.

E. M. Forster

Art, Taken, Men

E.M. Forster (1951). “Two Cheers for Democracy”

7 Copy quote

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Born: January 1, 1879
Died: June 7, 1970
Occupation: Novelist
Cite this Page: Citation

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