Welcome to the world of E. M. Forster, a literary luminary whose words continue to resonate through the corridors of time. Edward Morgan Forster, commonly known as E. M. Forster, was an English novelist, essayist, and short story writer, celebrated for his keen observations of society, insightful commentary on human relationships, and profound understanding of the human condition. Born in 1879, Forster’s literary legacy spans across the late Victorian era and into the modernist period, earning him a place among the most influential writers of the 20th century.
Forster’s works, including classics like A Room with a View, Howards End, and A Passage to India, explore themes of social class, cultural clashes, and the complexities of human connection. His narratives are rich tapestries woven with empathy, wit, and a deep sense of humanity, offering readers a lens through which to view the intricacies of life. Through his prose, Forster invites us to contemplate the nuances of love, freedom, and the search for meaning in a rapidly changing world. As we delve into the timeless wisdom encapsulated in his words, we embark on a journey of introspection and enlightenment, guided by the profound insights of one of literature’s finest minds. Now, let us delve into the profound and thought-provoking quotes of E. M. Forster.
A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself. E. M. Forster
I’m a holy man minus the holiness. E. M. Forster
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
One is certain of nothing but the truth of one’s own emotions. E. M. Forster
Reverence is fatal to literature. E. M. Forster
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
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
Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent. E. M. Forster
I am so used to seeing the sort of play which deals with one man and two women. They do not leave me with the feeling I have made a full theatrical meal they do not give me the experience of the multiplicity of life. E. M. Forster
Only people who have been allowed to practise freedom can have the grown-up look in their eyes. E. M. Forster
Two cheers for Democracy; one because it admits variety, and two because it permits criticism. E. M. Forster
So, two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. E. M. Forster
Tolerance is a very dull virtue. It is boring. Unlike love, it has always had a bad press. It is negative. It merely means putting up with people, being able to stand things. E. M. Forster
The final test for a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define. E. M. Forster
One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it. E. M. Forster
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
The more highly public life is organized the lower does its morality sink. E. M. Forster
Very notable was his distinction between coarseness and vulgarity, coarseness, revealing something; vulgarity, concealing something. E. M. Forster
Most quarrels are inevitable at the time; incredible afterwards. E. M. Forster
Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable. E. M. Forster
How can I know what I think till I see what I say? E. M. Forster
At the side of the everlasting why, is a yes, and a yes, and a yes. E. M. Forster
But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to merge in something else. E. M. Forster
England has always been disinclined to accept human nature. E. M. Forster
I have no mystic faith in the people. I have in the individual. E. M. Forster
I never could get on with representative individuals but people who existed on their own account and with whom it might therefore be possible to be friends. E. M. Forster
Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvellous than the land. E. M. Forster
The sadness of the incomplete, the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art. E. M. Forster
Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return. E. M. Forster
One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life. E. M. Forster
Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice. E. M. Forster
Paganism is infectious, more infectious than diphtheria or piety. E. M. Forster
Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon. E. M. Forster
Nonsense and beauty have close connections. E. M. Forster
Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch. E. M. Forster
One of the evils of money is that it tempts us to look at it rather than at the things that it buys. E. M. Forster
There is much good luck in the world, but it is luck. We are none of us safe. We are children, playing or quarrelling on the line. E. M. Forster
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
I am certainly an ought and not a must. E. M. Forster
It is my fate and perhaps my temperament to sign agreements with fools. E. M. Forster
The fact is we can only love what we know personally. And we cannot know much. In public affairs, in the rebuilding of civilization, something less dramatic and emotional is needed, namely tolerance. E. M. Forster
Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish! E. M. Forster
There is something majestic in the bad taste of Italy. E. M. Forster
Liking one person is an extra reason for liking another. E. M. Forster
We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand. E. M. Forster
The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death. E. M. Forster
I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I’d like to be. E. M. Forster
Those who prepared for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy. E. M. Forster
The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead. He can only gain that conception through personal experience, and he can only use his personal experiences when he is a genius. E. M. Forster
Be soft, even if you stand to get squashed. E. M. Forster
If there is on earth a house with many mansions, it is the house of words. E. M. Forster
We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet. E. M. Forster
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
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
It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness. E. M. Forster
Surely the only sound foundation for a civilization is a sound state of mind. E. M. Forster
History develops, art stands still. E. M. Forster
At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity. E. M. Forster
No one is India. E. M. Forster
Love is always being given where it is not required. E. M. Forster
We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. E. M. Forster
The English countryside, its growth and its destruction, is a genuine and tragic theme. E. M. Forster
The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal. E. M. Forster
Ideas are fatal to caste. E. M. Forster
The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race. E. M. Forster
What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives? E. M. Forster
America is rather like life. You can usually find in it what you look for. It will probably be interesting, and it is sure to be large. E. M. Forster
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
Only a struggle twists sentimentality and lust together into love. E. M. Forster
The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then queen died of grief is a plot. E. M. Forster
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
No man can be an agnostic who has a sense of humour. E. M. Forster
I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars. E. M. Forster
Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life. E. M. Forster
Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him. E. M. Forster
One marvels why the middle classes still insist on so much discomfort for their children at such expense to themselves. E. M. Forster
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
The woman who can’t influence her husband to vote the way she wants ought to be ashamed of herself. E. M. Forster
Think before you speak is criticism’s motto; speak before you think, creation’s. E. M. Forster
For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better. E. M. Forster
Unless we remember we cannot understand. E. M. Forster
Charm, in most men and nearly all women, is a decoration. E. M. Forster
Oxford is Oxford: not a mere receptacle for youth, like Cambridge. Perhaps it wants its inmates to love it rather than to love one another. E. M. Forster
Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man. E. M. Forster
The sort of poetry I seek resides in objects man can’t touch. E. M. Forster
We are all like Scheherazade’s husband, in that we want to know what happens next. E. M. Forster
The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists. E. M. Forster
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