“At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.”
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Famous E. M. Forster Quotes
“The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.”
Source: Two Cheers for Democracy
“Only a struggle twists sentimentality and lust together into love.”
“I'm a holy man minus the holiness.”
Source: A Passage to India
Source: Aspects Of the Novel
“Liking one person is an extra reason for liking another.”
Source: A Room With a View (Diversion Classics)
Source: Two Cheers for Democracy
“Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch.”
Source: Two Cheers for Democracy
“Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.”
“Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvellous than the land.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)
Source: Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)
“No man can be an agnostic who has a sense of humour.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)
“Nonsense and beauty have close connections.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)
“Only people who have been allowed to practise freedom can have the grown-up look in their eyes.”
Source: Two Cheers for Democracy
“We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)
“Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man.”
“Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.”
Source: Howards End
“England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.”
Source: Maurice
Source: A Passage to India
“It is my fate and perhaps my temperament to sign agreements with fools.”
“It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness.”
Source: Howard's End
“Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.”
Source: A Room With a View (Diversion Classics)
“One is certain of nothing but the truth of one's own emotions.”
Source: Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)
Source: Howard's End
Source: Howard's End
“Reverence is fatal to literature.”
Source: Two Cheers for Democracy
“Surely the only sound foundation for a civilization is a sound state of mind.”
Source: Two Cheers for Democracy
“The English countryside, its growth and its destruction, is a genuine and tragic theme.”
Source: Aspects Of the Novel
“The more highly public life is organized the lower does its morality sink.”
Source: Two Cheers for Democracy
“There is something majestic in the bad taste of Italy.”
Source: Where Angels Fear to Tread: England Literature
Source: Two Cheers for Democracy
Source: Two Cheers for Democracy