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E.M. Forster Quotes

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Famous E.M. Forster Quotes

“And again and again fell the word, like the ebb of a dying sea. "Good-bye.”

Sad Goodbye Simile Parting Howards End E M Forster Figurative Language

Source: Howards End

“Alas! that Henry should fade away as reality emerged, and only her love for him should remain clear, stamped with his image like the cameos we rescue out of dreams.”

Love Beautiful Metaphor Simile Howards End E M Forster Figurative Language

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“Helen forgot people. They were husks that had enclosed her emotion.”

Relationships Emotion Forgetting Disposable Howards End E M Forster Unattached

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet. This story deals with gentlefolk, or with those who are obliged to pretend that they are gentlefolk.”

Class Poverty Social Commentary Howards End E M Forster

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“Love was so unlike the article served up in books: the joy, though genuine, was different; the mystery an unexpected mystery.”

Love Reality Joy Mystery Books Howards End E M Forster

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“Mrs. Munt—such is human nature—determined that she would champion the lovers. She was not going to be bullied by a severe young man.”

Humor Human Nature Howards End E M Forster

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“Houses have their own ways of dying, falling as variously as the generations of men, some with a tragic roar, some quietly, but to an after-life in the city of ghosts, while from others—and thus was the death of Wickham Place—the spirit slips before the body perishes . . . By September it was a corpse, void of emotion, and scarcely hallowed by the memories of thirty years of happiness.”

Home Moving Howards End Houses E M Forster

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“Can what they call civilization be right, if people mayn't die in the room where they were born?”

Home Death Birth Howards End E M Forster Family Home

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“Mrs. Munt did not see, and indeed Margaret was making a most questionable statement—that any emotion, any interest once vividly aroused, can wholly die.”

Emotions Passionate Intense Moving On Closure Howards End E M Forster Interests

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“Oh, my dears, what do you think? You'll never guess. A woman's been here asking me for her husband. Her what?" (Helen was fond of supplying her own surprise.) "Yes, for her husband, and it really is so.”

Character Humor Dialogue Quirky Characterization Howards End E M Forster

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“But this is something quite new!" said Mrs. Munt, who collected new ideas as a squirrel collects nuts, and was especially attracted by those that are portable. "New for me; sensible people have acknowledged it for years. You and I and the Wilcoxes stand upon money as upon islands. It is so firm beneath our feet that we forget its very existence. It's only when we see someone near us tottering that we realize all that an independent income means. Last night, when we were talking up here round the fire, I began to think that the very soul of the world is economic, and that the lowest abyss is not the absence of love, but the absence of coin." "I call that rather cynical." "So do I. But Helen and I, we ought to remember, when we are tempted to criticize others, that we are standing on these islands, and that most of the others are down below the surface of the sea. The poor cannot always reach those whom they want to love, and they can hardly ever escape from those whom they love no longer. We rich can. Imagine the tragedy last June if Helen and Paul Wilcox had been poor people and could not invoke railways and motor-cars to part them." "That's more like Socialism," said Mrs. Munt suspiciously. "Call it what you like. I call it going through life with one's hand spread open on the table. I'm tired of these rich people who pretend to be poor, and think it shows a nice mind to ignore the piles of money that keep their feet above the waves. I stand each year upon six hundred pounds, and Helen upon the same, and Tibby will stand upon eight, and as fast as our pounds crumble away into the sea they are renewed—from the sea, yes, from the sea. And all our thoughts are the thoughts of six-hundred-pounders, and all our speeches; and because we don't want to steal umbrellas ourselves, we forget that below the sea people do want to steal them, and do steal them sometimes, and that what's a joke up here is down there reality—”

Ideas Money Class Injustice Privilege Income Inequality Howards End E M Forster

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“Rudeness affected Margaret like a bitter taste in the mouth. It poisoned life. At times it is necessary, but woe to those who employ it without due need.”

Life Manners Rude Rudeness Howards End E M Forster Unpleasant

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“She never saw it again. Day and night the river flows down into England, day after day the sun retreats into the Welsh mountains, and the tower chimes: 'See the Conquering Hero.' But the Wilcoxes have no part in the place, nor in any place. It is not their names that recur in the parish register. It is not their ghosts that sigh among the alders at evening. They have swept into the valley and swept out of it, leaving a little dust and a little money behind.”

Sad Description Howards End E M Forster Displaced Rootless

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“I don't want your patronage. I don't want your tea. I was quite happy. What do you want to unsettle me for?”

Sad Howards End E M Forster

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“It is like you to have thought of such a beautiful thing." Not a thing, only an ending," said Helen rather sadly; and the sense of tragedy closed in on Margaret again as soon as she left the house.”

Beautiful Sad Tragedy Ending Foreshadowing Howards End E M Forster Foreboding

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“No, it is better not to risk a second interview. I shall always look back on this talk with you as one of the finest things in my life. Really. I mean this. We can never repeat. It has done me real good, and there we had better leave it." "That's rather a sad view of life, surely." "Things so often get spoiled." "I know," flashed Helen. "But people don't.”

Remember Sad Dialogue Preservation Spoiled Once In A Lifetime Howards End E M Forster Never Again

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“The Wilcoxes were not lacking in affection; they had it royally, but they did not know how to use it. It was the talent in the napkin, and, for a warm-hearted man, Charles had conveyed very little joy. As he watched his father shuffling up the road, he had a vague regret—a wish that something had been different somewhere—a wish (though he did not express it thus) that he had been taught to say 'I' in his youth.”

Family Regret Affection Repression Repressed Howards End E M Forster

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“Ladies sheltering behind men, men sheltering behind servants - the whole system's wrong, and she must challenge it.”

Novel Classic Howards End E M Forster

Book:Howards End: Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism

Source: Howards End: Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism

“Then she turned westward, to gaze at the swirling gold. Just where the river rounded the hill the sun caught it. Fairyland must lie above the bend, and its precious liquid was pouring towards them past Charles's bathing shed.”

Beautiful Nature Lovely Description Sunlight Howards End E M Forster Fairyland

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“Tulips were a tray of jewels.”

Beautiful Metaphor Description Flowers Howards End E M Forster Figurative Language Tulips

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“London was beginning to illuminate herself against the night. Electric lights sizzled and jagged in the main thoroughfares, gas-lamps in the side streets glimmered a canary gold or green. The sky was a crimson battlefield of spring, but London was not afraid. Her smoke mitigated the splendour, and the clouds down Oxford Street were a delicately painted ceiling, which adorned while it did not distract. She has never known the clear-cut armies of the purer air. Leonard hurried through her tinted wonders, very much part of the picture. His was a grey life, and to brighten it he had ruled off a few corners for romance.”

Beautiful Romance London Description Colors Nightfall Howards End E M Forster

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“But Love cannot understand this. He cannot comprehend another's infinity; he is conscious only of his own—flying sunbeam, falling rose, pebble that asks for one quiet plunge below the fretting interplay of space and time. He knows that he will survive at the end of things, and be gathered by Fate as a jewel from the slime, and be handed with admiration round the assembly of the gods.”

Love Beautiful Eternal Metaphor Lovely Description Personification Howards End E M Forster Enduring

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“At such moments the soul retires within, to float upon the bosom of a deeper stream, and has communion with the dead, and sees the world's glory not diminished, but different in kind to what she has supposed.”

Soul Metaphor Inner Life Howards End E M Forster Withdrawn

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“She lowered her eyes a moment to the black abyss of the past.”

Metaphor The Past Howards End E M Forster Rememberance

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“Oniton, like herself, was imperfect. Its apple-trees were stunted, its castle ruinous. It, too, had suffered in the border warfare between the Anglo-Saxon and the Kelt, between things as they are and as they ought to be.”

Metaphor Howards End E M Forster

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“Well, it is odd and sad that our minds should be such seed-beds, and we without power to choose the seed. But man is an odd, sad creature as yet, intent on pilfering the earth, and heedless of the growths within himself.”

Mind Thoughts Uncontrollable Howards End E M Forster

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“A short-frocked edition of Charles also regards them placidly; a perambulator edition is squeaking; a third edition is expected shortly. Nature is turning out Wilcoxes in this peaceful abode, so that they may inherit the earth.”

Children Humor Procreation Howards End E M Forster

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“Here had lived an elder race, to which we look back with disquietude. The country which we visit at week-ends was really a home to it, and the graver sides of life, the deaths, the partings, the yearnings for love, have their deepest expression in the heart of the fields.”

Love Life Country Death Parting Countryside Howards End E M Forster

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“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.”

Love Loved Ones Howards End E M Forster

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“How wide the gulf between Henry as he was and Henry as Helen thought he ought to be! And she herself—hovering as usual between the two, now accepting men as they are, now yearning with her sister for Truth. Love and Truth—their warfare seems eternal. Perhaps the whole visible world rests on it, and if they were one, life itself, like the spirits when Prospero was reconciled to his brother, might vanish into air, into thin air.”

Love Truth Conflict Allusion The World Howards End E M Forster Expectations Vs Reality

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“Because a thing is going strong now, it need not go strong forever . . . This craze for motion has only set in during the last hundred years. It may be followed by a civilization that won't be a movement, because it will rest on the earth. All the signs are against it now, but I can't help hoping, and very early in the morning in the garden I feel that out house is the future as well as the past.”

Nature Civilization Past And Future Howards End E M Forster Pastoral Back To Nature

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him—that is the best account of it that has been yet given. Squalor and tragedy can beckon to all that is great in us; and strengthen the wings of love.”

Love Death Tragedy Salvation Howards End E M Forster Squalor

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“She had a strong, if erroneous, conviction of her own futility, and wished she had never come out of her backwater, where nothing happened except art and literature, and where no one ever got married or succeeded in remaining engaged.”

Society Insecure Futility Self Doubt Howards End E M Forster Out Of Place

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“Looking back on the past six months, Margaret realized the chaotic nature of our daily life, and its difference from the orderly sequence that has been fabricated by historians. Actual life is full of false clues and sign-posts that lead nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken. On a tragedy of that kind our national morality is duly silent. It assumes that preparation against danger is in itself a good, and that men, like nations, are the better for staggering through life fully armed. The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty. Margaret hoped that for the future she would be less cautious, not more cautious, than she had been in the past.”

Life Romance Battle Tragedy Greek Preparedness Unprepared Howards End E M Forster

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“The mystery, like so many mysteries, was explained.”

Mystery Mysteries Howards End E M Forster Explained

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“Both times it was loneliness, and the night, and panic afterwards.”

Night Sex Relationships Loneliness Regret Panic Howards End E M Forster

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“In this jangle of causes and effects, what had become of their true selves? Here Leonard lay dead in the garden, from natural causes; yet life was a deep, deep river, death a blue sky, life was a house, death a wisp of hay, a flower, a tower, life and death were anything and everything, except this ordered insanity, where the king takes the queen, and the ace the king. Ah, no; there was beauty and adventure behind, such as the man at her feet had yearned for; there was hope this side of the grave; there were truer relationships beyond the limits that fetter us now. As a prisoner looks up and sees stars beckoning, so she, from the turmoil and horror of those days, caught glimpses of the diviner wheels.”

Life Death Relationships Life And Death Cause And Effect Howards End E M Forster True Selves

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“My conviction," says the mystic, "gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it," and they had agreed that there was something beyond life's daily grey.”

Life Belief Conviction Solidarity Howards End Kindred Spirits E M Forster Like Minded Something More Shared Beliefs

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“In other words, they belong to types that could fall in love, but couldn't live together.”

Relationships Fall In Love Howards End E M Forster Incompatible Starcrossed Lovers Not Meant To Be

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“They led a life that she could not attain to—the outer life of 'telegrams and anger,' which had detonated when Helen and Paul had touched in June, and had detonated again the other week.”

Howards End E M Forster Outer Life

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“Did he at all know where he wanted to live? Tibby didn't know that he did know. Did he at all know what he wanted to do? He was equally uncertain, but when pressed remarked that he should prefer to be quite free of any profession.”

Humor Howards End E M Forster Indecisive Unmotivated

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“Everything seems just alike in these days.”

Monotonous Howards End E M Forster Modern Age Unoriginal

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“You have less restraint rather than more as you grow older. Think it over and alter yourself, or we shan't have happy lives.”

Restraint Howards End E M Forster Unrestrained

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

“In her eyes Henry was always moving, and causing others to move, until the ends of the earth met. But in time he must get too tired to move, and settle down. What next? The inevitable word. The release of the soul to its appropriate Heaven. Would they meet in it? Margaret believed in immortality for herself. An eternal future had always seemed natural to her. And Henry believed in it for himself. Yet, would they meet again? Are there not rather endless levels beyond the grave, as the theory that he had censured teaches? And his level, whether higher or lower, could it possibly be the same as hers?”

Soul Death Heaven Inevitable Afterlife Soul Mates Howards End E M Forster

Book:Howards End

Source: Howards End

About the Author

Known for: Author
Quotes: 309

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