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E. M. Forster

115 quotes

“I am the means and not the end. I am the food and not the life. Stand by yourself, as that boy has stood. I cannot save you. For poetry is a spirit; and they that would worship it must worship in spirit and in truth.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1911 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Celestial Omnibus" (1911)
“There is fascism, leading only into the blackness which it has chosen as its symbol, into smartness and yapping out of orders, and self-righteous brutality, into social as well as international war. It means change without hope. Our immediate duty — in that tinkering which is the only useful form of action in our leaky old tub — our immediate duty is to stop it.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Notes on the Way", Time and Tide Magazine (10 June 1934); reprinted in The Prince's Tale and Other Uncollected Writings (1998)
“I know very well how limited and how open to criticism, English freedom is. It is race-bound and it's class-bound. It means freedom for the Englishman, but not for the subject-races of his Empire. If you invite the average Englishman to share his liberties with the inhabitants of India or Kenya, he will reply, "Never," if he is a Tory, and "Not until I consider them worthy" if he is a Liberal.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Liberty In England", Speech (21 June 1935); reprinted in Abinger Harvest (1936)
“As for my politics, you will have guessed that I am not a Fascist — Fascism does evil that evil may come. And I am not a Communist, though perhaps I might be one if I was a younger and braver man, for in Communism I see hope. It does many things which I think evil, but I know that it intends good. I am actually what my age and my upbringing have made me — a bourgeois who adheres to the British constitution, adheres to it rather than supports it, and the fact that this isn't dignified doesn't worry me. I do care about the past. I do care about the preservation and extension of freedom.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Liberty In England", Speech (21 June 1935); reprinted in Abinger Harvest (1936)
“I enjoy French poetry as well as French prose, and I believe that this land must have some cultural connection with the European continent, and that she is best connected through her spiritual complement across the Straits of Dover.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1943 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Some Books: A New Year's Resolution for 1944" (1943); reprinted in The Creator as Critic and Other Writings by E.M. Forster edited by Jeffrey M. Heath (2008)
“Music is the deepest of the arts and deep beneath the arts.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1947 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Harvard University Department of Music, Music and Criticism, A Symposium (May 1947; published 1948, p. 11)
“The really bad people, it seems to me, are those who do no good anywhere and help no one either at home or abroad. There are plenty of them about, and when they are clever as well as selfish they often manage to slip through their lives unnoticed, and so escape the censure of historians.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1797 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Marianne Thornton, 1797–1887: A Domestic Biography (1956), p. 54
“This slight humorous anti-Semitism is characteristic. Not until the present century did the British middle classes realise what jokes about Jews can lead to.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1797 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Marianne Thornton, 1797–1887: A Domestic Biography (1956), p. 83
“Romance only dies with life. No pair of pincers will ever pull it out of us. But there is a spurious sentiment which cannot resist the unexpected and the incongruous and the grotesque. A touch will loosen it, and the sooner it goes from us the better.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This woman was a goddess to the end. For her no love could be degrading: she stood outside all degradation. This episode, which she thought so sordid, and which was so tragic for him, remained supremely beautiful. To such a height was he lifted, that without regret he could now have told her that he was her worshipper too. But what was the use of telling her? For all the wonderful things had happened. "Thank you," was all that he permitted himself. "Thank you for everything.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is so difficult – at least, I find it difficult – to understand people who speak the truth.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There's enough sorrow in the world, isn't there, without trying to invent it.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 common place 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 transalate his visions into human words, and his experiences into human actions.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It isn't possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know from experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Don't trust me, Miss Honeychurch. Though life is very glorious, it is difficult.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Then make my boy think like us. Make him realize that by the side of the everlasting Why there is a Yes—a transitory Yes if you like, but a Yes.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Don't brood too much," she wrote to Helen, "on the superiority of the unseen to the seen. It's true, but to brood on it is mediæval. Our business is not to contrast the two, but to reconcile them.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There's nothing like a debate to teach one quickness. I often wish I had gone in for them when I was a youngster. It would have helped me no end.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever and not this outer life of telegrams and anger.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion. Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man. With it love is born, and alights on the highest curve, glowing against the grey, sober against the fire. Happy the man who sees from either aspect the glory of these outspread wings. The roads of his soul lie clear, and he and his friends shall find easy-going.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In these English farms, if anywhere, one might see life steadily and see it whole, group in one vision its transitoriness and its eternal youth, connect — connect without bitterness until all men are brothers.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One death may explain itself, but it throws no light upon another: the groping inquiry must begin anew. Preachers or scientists may generalize, but we know that no generality is possible about those whom we love; not one heaven awaits them, not even one oblivion.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is those who cannot connect who hasten to cast the first stone.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People have their own deaths as well as their own lives, and even if there is nothing beyond death, we shall differ in our nothingness.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Adventures do occur, but not punctually.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All invitations must proceed from heaven perhaps; perhaps it is futile for men to initiate their own unity, they do but widen the gulfs between them by the attempt.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talks that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence. Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend. There are periods in the most thrilling day during which nothing happens, and though we continue to exclaim, “I do enjoy myself", or , “I am horrified,” we are insincere.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Pathos, piety, courage, — they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'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 (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through exams, so long must we take the examination system seriously. If another ladder to employment was contrived, much so-called education would disappear, and no one be a penny the stupider.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A mirror does not develop because an historical pageant passes in front of it. It only develops when it gets a fresh coat of quicksilver — in other words, when it acquires new sensitiveness; and the novel's success lies in its own sensitiveness, not in the success of its subject matter.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If God could tell the story of the Universe, the Universe would become fictitious.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Most of us will be eclectics to this side or that according to our temperament. The human mind is not a dignified organ, and I do not see how we can exercise it sincerely except through eclecticism. And the only advice I would offer my fellow eclectics is: "Do not be proud of your inconsistency. It is a pity, it is a pity that we should be equipped like this. It is a pity that Man cannot be at the same time impressive and truthful.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If human nature does alter it will be because individuals manage to look at themselves in a new way. Here and there people — a very few people, but a few novelists are among them — are trying to do this. Every institution and vested interest is against such a search: organized religion, the state, the family in its economic aspect, have nothing to gain, and it is only when outward prohibitions weaken that it can proceed: history conditions it to that extent.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I do not believe in Belief. But this is an Age of Faith, and there are so many militant creeds that, in self defence, one has to formulate a creed of one's own. Tolerance, good temper and sympathy are no longer enough in a world where ignorance rules, and Science, which ought to have ruled, plays the pimp. Tolerance, good temper and sympathy — they are what matter really, and if the human race is not to collapse they must come to the front before long.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whether Parliament is either a representative body or an efficient one is questionable, but I value it because it criticizes and talks, and because its chatter gets widely reported. So two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. Two cheers are quite enough: there is no occasion to give three.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Valkyries are symbols not only of courage but of intelligence; they represent the human spirit snatching its opportunity while the going is good, and one of them even finds time to love. Bruennhilde's last song hymns the recurrence of love, and since it is the privilege of art to exaggerate she goes even further, and proclaims the love which is eternally triumphant, and feeds upon freedom and lives.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An efficiency-regime cannot be run without a few heroes stuck about it to carry off the dullness — much as plums have to be put into bad pudding to make it palatable.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man's pleasure when they come a cropper.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The more highly public life is organized the lower does its morality sink; the nations of today behave to each other worse than they ever did in the past, they cheat, rob, bully and bluff, make war without notice, and kill as many women and children as possible; whereas primitive tribes were at all events restrained by taboos.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Naked I came into this 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 (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Tolerance] is just a makeshift, suitable for an overcrowded and overheated planet. It carries on when love gives out, and love generally gives out as soon as we move away from our home and our friends.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source