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Quote by E.M. Forster

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A Room with a View

E. M. Forster's 'A Room with a View' is a narrative that delves into the experiences of Lucy Honeychurch, a young woman from a British upper-middle-class family. The story unfolds in Italy and England, as Lucy navigates the complexities of love, societal expectations, and her own evolving sense of self. The novel is renowned for its vivid portrayal of the English upper class and the transformative power of travel and personal discovery. more

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E.M. Forster

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“Here I dare to be myself. I don't see why it should ever be again be important to me what I wear, or whether I have read the latest book or seen the latest play, or know the newest catch word. I don't see why I should ever care again what people think of me. It seems silly now, but those things were once important. I don't see why it should ever matter to me again who does or does not invite me to her house, who does or does not speak to me, who does or does not have more money than I have. Those things used to matter, though, because I had no identity of my own. I had nothing to go by but the standards someone else had set up.”

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Book:We Took to the Woods
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“They could for example point out that the use of an expression like "natural modesty" is not always defensible, for if it is "natural" to be modest, it must be something you are born with, something innate. But is it really innate, Sophie--or is it socially induced? To someone who has traveled the world, the answer should be simple: It is not "natural"--or innate--to be afraid to show yourself naked. Modesty--or the lack of it--is first and foremost a matter of social convention.”

PhilosophyModestySocial Convention
Book:Sophie’s World
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“The history of philosophy, and perhaps especially of moral, social and political philosophy, is there to prevent us from becoming too readily bewitched. The intellectual historian can help us to appreciate how far the values embodied in our present way of life, and our present ways of thinking about those values, reflect a series of choices made at different times between different possible worlds. This awareness can help to liberate us from the grip of any one hegemonal account of those values and how they should be interpreted and understood. Equipped with a broader sense of possibility, we can stand back from the intellectual commitments we have inherited and ask ourselves in a new spirit of enquiry what we should think of them.”

PoliticsHistoryHistory Of Thought
Book:Liberty Before Liberalism
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“It may take a decade or two before the extent of Shakespeare's collaboration passes from the graduate seminar to the undergraduate lecture, and finally to popular biography, by which time it will be one of those things about Shakespeare that we thought we knew all along. Right now, though, for those who teach the plays and write about his life, it hasn't been easy abandoning old habits of mind. I know that I am not alone in struggling to come to terms with how profoundly it alters one's sense of how Shakespeare wrote, especially toward the end of his career when he coauthored half of his last ten plays. For intermixed with five that he wrote alone, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, and The Tempest, are Timon of Athens (written with Thomas Middleton), Pericles (written with George Wilkins), and Henry the Eighth, the lost Cardenio, and The Two Noble Kinsmen (all written with John Fletcher).”

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Book:Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?
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“Intellectual activity in a culture is not a one-way flow between the great minds and passive recipients; it is a discourse, a complex marketplace-like conglomeration of intellectual exchanges involving many participants all trying to manipulate the ideas available to them in order to explain, justify, lay blame for, or otherwise make sense of what is happening around them. Everyone, not just the great minds, participates in this complicated process.”

PhilosophyHistoryHistory Of Thought
Book:The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History
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