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E. M. Forster

115 quotes

• “Hardship is vanishing, but so is style, and the two are more closely connected than the present generation supposes.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote, and brings to birth in us also the creative impulse.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think is creation's.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “A humanist has four leading characteristics — curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Dead silence ensued, which was well enough for Ansell, to whom it merely meant that neither of us had any more to say. But to educated people silence matters; it is a token of stupidity and lack of invention.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “But that was only the beginning of her mortification. Harold had proved her wrong. He had seen that she was a shifty, shallow hypocrite. She had not dared to be alone with him since her exposure. She had never looked at him and had hardly spoken. He seemed cheerful, but what was he thinking? He would never forgive her.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 – then 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 (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “‘Why are pictures like this allowed?’ he suddenly cried. He had stopped in front of a colonial print in which the martyrdom of St Agatha was depicted with all the fervour that incompetence could command. ‘It’s only a saint,’ said Lady Peaslake, placidly raising her head. ‘How disgusting – and how ugly’ ‘Yes, very. It’s Roman Catholic.’”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “She began to speak, but waited a moment for the maid to clear away the tea. In the waning light her room seemed gentle and grey, and there hung about it an odour (I do not write ‘the odour’) of Roman Catholicism, which is assuredly among the gracious things of the world. It was the room of a woman who had found time to be good to herself as well as to others; who had brought forth fruit, spiritual and temporal; who had borne a mysterious tragedy not only with patience but actually with joy.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “This conversation taught me that some of us can meet reality on this side of the grave. I do not envy them. Such adventures may profit the disembodied soul, but as long as I have flesh and blood I pray that my grossness preserve me. Our lower nature has its dreams. Mine is of a certain farm, windy but fruitful, half-way between the deserted moorland and the uninhabitable sea. Hither, at rare intervals, she should descend and he ascend, to shatter their spiritual communion by one caress.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “His hand came nearer, his eyes danced round the room, which began to fill with a golden haze. He beckoned, and Clesant moved into his arms. Clesand had often been proud of his disease but never, never of his body, it had never occurred to him that he could provoke desire. This sudden revelation shattered him, he fell from his pedestal, but not alone, there was someone to cling to, broad shoulders, a sunburnt throat, lips that parted as they touched him to murmur – ‘And to hell with Woolacott’.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It is better to have a home of one's own than to always be a typist. Hilda did not talk quite as she should, and her husband had not scrupled to correct her. She had never forgotten – it was such a small thing, yet she could not forget it – she had never forgotten that night on their honeymoon when she had said something ungrammatical about the relative position of their limbs.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Before the civil war, Pottibakia was a normal member of the Comity of Nations. She erected tariff walls, broke treaties, persecuted minorities, obstructed at conferences unless she was convinced there was no danger of a satisfactory solution; then she strained every nerve in the cause of peace.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Laughing at mankind is rather weary rot, I think. We shall never meet with anyone nicer. Nature, whom I used to be keen on, is too unfair. She evokes plenty of high & exhausting feelings, and offers nothing in return.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1905 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter 57, to Arthur Cole, 7 July 1905

• “You can gather however that I know I am not a real artist, and at the same time am fearfully serious over my work and willing to sweat at atmosphere if it helps me do what I want. What I want, I think, is the sentimental, but the sentimental reached by no easy beaten track—I cannot explain myself properly, for you must remember (I forget it myself) that though 'clever' I have a small and cloudy brain, and cannot clear it by talking or reading philosophy.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1905 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter 60, to Robert Trevelyan, 28 October 1905

• “As for 'story' I never yet did enjoy a novel or play in which someone didn't tell me afterward that there was something wrong with the story, so that's going to be no drawback as far as I'm concerned. "Good Lord, why am I so bored"—"I know; it must be the plot developing harmoniously." So I often reply to myself, and there rises before me my special nightmare—that of the writer as craftsman, natty and deft.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter 104, to Forrest Reid, 19 June 1912

• “The newspapers still talk about glory but the average man, thank God, has got rid of that illusion. It is a damned bore, with a stall mate as the most probable outcome, but one has to see it through, and see it through with the knowledge that whichever side wins, civilisation in Europe will be pipped for the next 30 years. Don't indulge in Romance here, Malcolm, or suppose that an era of jolly little nationalities is dawning. We shall be much too much occupied with pestilence and poverty to reconstruct.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter 136, to Malcolm Darling, 6 November 1914

• “Masood, a young lady has fallen in love with me—at least so I judge from her letters. Awkward is it not—awkward and surprising. You would be flattered and twirl your moustache, but I am merely uncomfortable. I wish she would stop, as she is very nice, and I enjoyed being friends. What an ill constructed world this is! Love is always being given where it is not required.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter 137, to Syed Ross Masood, 5 December 1914

• “I wrote it [Maurice] neither for my friends or the public—but because it was weighing on me; and my previous training made me write it as literature, though for a long time I meant to show it no one at all. [...] I am much dependant on criticism and now, backed by you and some others, do feel that I have created something absolutely new, even to the Greeks. Whitman nearly anticipated me but he didn't really know what he was after, or only half knew—shirked, even to himself, the statement.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1915 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter 144, to Edward Joseph Dent, 6 March 1915

• “Happiness in the ordinary sense is not what one needs in life, though one is right to aim at it. The true satisfaction is to come through and see those whom one loves come through.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1922 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter 216, to Florence Barger, 11 February 1922

• “Science, when applied to personal relationships, is always just wrong.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter 231, to W. J. H. Sprott, 28 June 1923

• “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 (1879–1970) first seen 1924 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter 251, to Florence Barger, 23 December 1924

• “Pain is good, I'd say, when it's incidental to Love. In 'I give up my life for my friend' it is my friend, not my death, that matters. And sometimes I needn't give up my life for him, I can live for him, and with him, and the power of the spirit is then equally manifested, I should think.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter 285, to George Thomson, 1 August 1931

• “[Before the prostate operation] I feel gay and calm, but have an open mind as to whether I shall get through or not[.] I don't say this to anyone else, but I love you too much to say anything but the truth. I don't feel afraid of anything and it is your love that has made me be like this. I hope to come back to you and everything and be as before, and I will try my best to do so.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter 311, to Robert J. Buckingham, 17 December 1935

• “Your letter firmed me up a lot. It certainly is a comfort to know that my work is respected by someone whom I respect and am as fond of as you. It confirms my belief that life is not all nonsense and cruelty—the inversion of Victorian complacency—but has hard spots of sense and love bobbing about in it here and there.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter 330, to Christopher Isherwood, 28 August 1938

• “My difficulty with working class writers is that they don't make the working class come alive—Leslie Halward is an exception, but as you imply he is not very important. They give me information and they give their comrades gratification, but that's all; gloom, indignation, aspiration in plenty, and plenty of stains on the tablecloth and coal-dust in the mine—but no living beings to experience them.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter 350, to John Lehmann, 21 December 1940

• “The story of the Fall always fascinates me as a play ground, but I cannot find any profound meaning in it, because of my 'liberal' view of human nature: I cannot believe in a state of original innocence, still less in a profound meaning in it, and I am always minimising the conception and the extent of Sin and the sinfulness of sex.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter 396, to Eric Fletcher, 9 July 1951

• “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 (1879–1970) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter 400, to John Morris, 12 January 1953

• “I went to our Theological College lately, Westcott House, and we had a sort of chat. He told me that without him it was impossible to understand the universe, and I came away having forgotten to reply that it did not occur to me to try to understand the universe. I must not run on like this so. Or rather what I mean is I have just finished the biography of my great aunt. Understanding, or partially understanding, her has been quite a large enough job.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1955 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter 411, to Lionel Trilling, 1 August 1955

• “I had an interesting day's reading yesterday, with the sudden sensation of being in close contact with what I was reading. [...] But as for reading how curious it is: all these books, their lore of the ages, waiting to be embraced but usually slipping out of one's nerveless hands on to the floor. When one reads properly it is as if a third person is present.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter 419, to William Plomer, 12 December 1957

• “Axiom: Novel must have either one living character or a perfect pattern: fails otherwise.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Probable that I am now better than most people and as good as I ever shall be at this game, and can therefore get to know anyone I wish, provided I am not physically repellent. And perhaps this is why personal relationships no longer seem to me a serious branch of study.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I don't think literature will be purged until its philosophic pretentiousness is extruded, and I shant live to see that purge, nor perhaps when it has happened will anything survive.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Self-pity? I see no moral objections to it, the smell drives people away, but that's a practical objection, and occasionally an advantage.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I grudged her nothing except my company. But it has gone further, like the degradation of rural England: this afternoon (Sunday in April) all the young men had women with them in far-flung camaraderie. If women ever wanted to be by themselves all would be well. But I don't believe they ever want to be, except for reasons of advertisement, and their instinct is never to let men be by themselves. This, I begin to see, is sex-war, and D.H.L. has seen it, in spite of a durable marriage, and is far more on the facts than Bernard Shaw and his Life Force.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “No disease of the imagination is so difficult to cure, as that which is complicated with the dread of guilt: fancy and conscience then act interchangeably upon us, and so often shift their places, that the illusions of one are not distinguished from the dictates of the other.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[...] it is now only in letters I write what I feel: not in literature any more, and I seldom say it, because I keep trying to be amusing.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “One can run away from women, turn them out, or give in to them. No fourth course.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Today 29-9-34 in the garden, rockery side, looking up to the house where Bone was working, sky bluish, very gentle, I looked without theories or self consciousness. This happens very seldom, though I can prolong the delight if I prevent my engines from restarting.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “But I have seen my obstacles: trivialities, learning and poetry. This last needs explaining: the old artist's readiness to dissolve characters into a haze. Characters cannot come alive and fight and guide the world unless the novelist wants them to remain characters.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “N.B. this book and pensées not important and the temptation to mistake them for Creation must be resisted.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1943 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 155 (1943)

• “Peacefulness to be found in writing. Why do I not write every day? Partly because I feel I ought to write well and know I can't. But that is not a good enough reason for not writing, if it gains me poise & peace.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 219 (1960)

• “I haven't made my point yet, which is that it is right to be kind and even sacrifice ourselves to people who need kindness and lie in our way — otherwise, besides failing to help them, we run into the aridity of self-development. To seek for recipients of one's goodness, to play the Potted Jesus leads to the contrary the Christian danger.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 243 (1963)

• “If escapes the oblivion he so much dreaded, it will be neither as doctor nor as mathematician, but because, at the end of his life, he wrote a little book about himself, and wrote it in the right way. He had always been interested in the subject; and fragments of autobiography occur in most of his works. Now he gives it undivided attention, and endeavours, through fifty-four chapters, to describe his character, constitution, and fortunes. He might have been to us merely a person of some importance in his time—a funny old man who pottered about, four centuries ago, besides the springs of science. Hitherto his egotism has rescued him. He is so supremely interesting to himself, that he cannot but interest others; and his little book ranks among the great autobiographies of the world.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1905 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Cardan", The Independent Review, vol. 5 (February—April 1905), p. 365

• “Sir, – Mr A. A. Milne's brilliant article deserves special thanks for its scathing analysis of 'the sanctity of our graves in Gallipoli'. Our rulers knew that their policy would not be popular, and in the hope of stampeding us into it they permitted this vile appeal – the viler because the sentiment that it tries to pervert is a noble one and purifies the life of a nation when directed rightly. The bodies of the young men who are buried out there have no quarrel with one another now, no part in our quarrels or interest in our patronage, no craving for holocausts of more young men. Anyone who has himself entered, however feebly, into the life of the spirit, can realize this. It is only the elderly ghouls of Whitehall who exhume the dead for the purpose of party propaganda and employ them as a bait to catch the living... At the next election can we not provide them with a quiet retreat of their own? Its sanctity should be inviolable.”

  E. M. Forster (1879–1970) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to The Daily News during the Chanak Crisis (9 October 1922), quoted in P. N. Furbank, E. M. Forster: A Life, Vol. 2: Polycrates' Ring 1914–1970 (1978; 1979 ed.), p. 112

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