TOPICS
SPEAKERS
HOME
BROWSE TOPICS
BROWSE SPEAKERS
◀ BACK

E.M. Forster

Other
1
2
We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won't do harm - yes, choose a place where you won't do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.
From A Room with a View
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It comes to this then: there always have been people like me and always will be, and generally they have been persecuted.
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I have almost completed a long novel, but it is unpublishable until my death and England's.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Some leave our life with tears, others with an insane frigidity; Mrs. Wilcox had taken the middle course, which only rarer natures can pursue. She had kept proportion. She had told a little of her grim secret to her friends, but not too much; she had shut up her heart--almost, but not entirely. It is thus, if there is any rule, that we ought to die--neither as victim nor as fanatic, but as the seafarer who can greet with an equal eye the deep that he is entering, and the shore that he must leave.
From Howards End
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He educated Maurice, or rather his spirit educated Maurice's spirit, for they themselves became equal. Neither thought "Am I led; am I leading?" Love had caught him out of triviality and Maurice out of bewilderment in order that two imperfect souls might touch perfection.
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The unbeliever has always such a very clear idea as to what Belief ought to be, I wish I had half his certainty.
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There was something better in life than this rub­bish, if only he could get to it—love—nobility—big spaces where passion clasped peace, spaces no science could reach, but they existed for ever, full of woods some of them, and arched with majestic sky and a friend. . .
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Did you ever dream you had a friend, Alec? Someone to last your whole life and you his. I suppose such a thing can’t really happen outside sleep.
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
From What I Believe and Other Essays
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Culture had worked in her own case, but during the last few weeks she had doubted whether it humanized the majority, so wide and so widening is the gulf that stretches between the natural and the philosophic man, so many the good chaps who are wrecked in trying to cross it.
From Howards End
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
After all, is not a real Hell better than a manufactured Heaven?
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Yet he was doing a fine thing — proving on how little a soul can exist. Fed neither by Heaven nor by Earth he was going forward, a lamp that would have blown out, were materialism true. He hadn't a God, he hadn't a lover — the two usual incentives to virtue. But on he struggled with his back to ease, because dignity demanded it. There was no one to watch him, nor did he watch himself, but struggles like his are the supreme achievements of humanity, and suppress any legends about Heaven.
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The ethereal past had blinded him, and the highest happiness he could dream was a return to it.
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Life' wrote a friend of mine, 'is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.
From A Room with a View
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.
From Howards End
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He had known so much about her once -what she thought, how she felt, the reasons for her actions. And now he only knew that he loved her, and all the other knowledge seemed passing from him just as he needed it most.
From Where Angels Fear to Tread
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Both times it was loneliness, and the night, and panic afterwards.
From Howards End
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He had awoken too late for happiness, but not for strength, and could feel an austere joy, as of a warrior who is homeless but stands fully armed.
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I can only do what's easy. I can only entice and be enticed. I can't, and won't, attempt difficult relations. If I marry it will either be a man who's strong enough to boss me or whom I'm strong enough to boss. So I shan't ever marry, for there aren't such men. And Heaven help any one whom I do marry, for I shall certainly run away from him before you can say 'Jack Robinson.
From Howards End
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
They must live outside class, without relations or money; they must work and stick to each other till death. But England belonged to them. That, besides companionship, was their reward. Her air and sky were theirs, not the timorous millions' who own stuffy little boxes, but never their own souls.
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We reach in desperation beyond the fog, beyond the very stars, the voids of the universe are ransacked to justify the monster, and stamped with a human face. London is religions opportunity--not the decorous religion of theologians, but an anthropomorphic, crude. Yes, the continuous flow would be tolerable if a man of our own sort--not anyone pompous or tearful--were caring for us up in the sky.
From Howards End
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say "yesterday I was happy, today I am not.
From Where Angels Fear to Tread
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Let us think of people as starting life with an experience they forget and ending it with one which they anticipate but cannot understand.
From Aspects of the Novel
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won't do harm - yes, choose a place where you won't do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.
From A Room with a View
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It comes to this then: there always have been people like me and always will be, and generally they have been persecuted.
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I have almost completed a long novel, but it is unpublishable until my death and England's.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Some leave our life with tears, others with an insane frigidity; Mrs. Wilcox had taken the middle course, which only rarer natures can pursue. She had kept proportion. She had told a little of her grim secret to her friends, but not too much; she had shut up her heart--almost, but not entirely. It is thus, if there is any rule, that we ought to die--neither as victim nor as fanatic, but as the seafarer who can greet with an equal eye the deep that he is entering, and the shore that he must leave.
From Howards End
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He educated Maurice, or rather his spirit educated Maurice's spirit, for they themselves became equal. Neither thought "Am I led; am I leading?" Love had caught him out of triviality and Maurice out of bewilderment in order that two imperfect souls might touch perfection.
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The unbeliever has always such a very clear idea as to what Belief ought to be, I wish I had half his certainty.
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There was something better in life than this rub­bish, if only he could get to it—love—nobility—big spaces where passion clasped peace, spaces no science could reach, but they existed for ever, full of woods some of them, and arched with majestic sky and a friend. . .
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Did you ever dream you had a friend, Alec? Someone to last your whole life and you his. I suppose such a thing can’t really happen outside sleep.
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
From What I Believe and Other Essays
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Culture had worked in her own case, but during the last few weeks she had doubted whether it humanized the majority, so wide and so widening is the gulf that stretches between the natural and the philosophic man, so many the good chaps who are wrecked in trying to cross it.
From Howards End
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
After all, is not a real Hell better than a manufactured Heaven?
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Yet he was doing a fine thing — proving on how little a soul can exist. Fed neither by Heaven nor by Earth he was going forward, a lamp that would have blown out, were materialism true. He hadn't a God, he hadn't a lover — the two usual incentives to virtue. But on he struggled with his back to ease, because dignity demanded it. There was no one to watch him, nor did he watch himself, but struggles like his are the supreme achievements of humanity, and suppress any legends about Heaven.
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The ethereal past had blinded him, and the highest happiness he could dream was a return to it.
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Life' wrote a friend of mine, 'is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.
From A Room with a View
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.
From Howards End
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He had known so much about her once -what she thought, how she felt, the reasons for her actions. And now he only knew that he loved her, and all the other knowledge seemed passing from him just as he needed it most.
From Where Angels Fear to Tread
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Both times it was loneliness, and the night, and panic afterwards.
From Howards End
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He had awoken too late for happiness, but not for strength, and could feel an austere joy, as of a warrior who is homeless but stands fully armed.
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I can only do what's easy. I can only entice and be enticed. I can't, and won't, attempt difficult relations. If I marry it will either be a man who's strong enough to boss me or whom I'm strong enough to boss. So I shan't ever marry, for there aren't such men. And Heaven help any one whom I do marry, for I shall certainly run away from him before you can say 'Jack Robinson.
From Howards End
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
They must live outside class, without relations or money; they must work and stick to each other till death. But England belonged to them. That, besides companionship, was their reward. Her air and sky were theirs, not the timorous millions' who own stuffy little boxes, but never their own souls.
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We reach in desperation beyond the fog, beyond the very stars, the voids of the universe are ransacked to justify the monster, and stamped with a human face. London is religions opportunity--not the decorous religion of theologians, but an anthropomorphic, crude. Yes, the continuous flow would be tolerable if a man of our own sort--not anyone pompous or tearful--were caring for us up in the sky.
From Howards End
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say "yesterday I was happy, today I am not.
From Where Angels Fear to Tread
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Let us think of people as starting life with an experience they forget and ending it with one which they anticipate but cannot understand.
From Aspects of the Novel
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won't do harm - yes, choose a place where you won't do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.
From A Room with a View
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
It comes to this then: there always have been people like me and always will be, and generally they have been persecuted.
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I have almost completed a long novel, but it is unpublishable until my death and England's.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Some leave our life with tears, others with an insane frigidity; Mrs. Wilcox had taken the middle course, which only rarer natures can pursue. She had kept proportion. She had told a little of her grim secret to her friends, but not too much; she had shut up her heart--almost, but not entirely. It is thus, if there is any rule, that we ought to die--neither as victim nor as fanatic, but as the seafarer who can greet with an equal eye the deep that he is entering, and the shore that he must leave.
From Howards End
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He educated Maurice, or rather his spirit educated Maurice's spirit, for they themselves became equal. Neither thought "Am I led; am I leading?" Love had caught him out of triviality and Maurice out of bewilderment in order that two imperfect souls might touch perfection.
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The unbeliever has always such a very clear idea as to what Belief ought to be, I wish I had half his certainty.
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There was something better in life than this rub­bish, if only he could get to it—love—nobility—big spaces where passion clasped peace, spaces no science could reach, but they existed for ever, full of woods some of them, and arched with majestic sky and a friend. . .
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Did you ever dream you had a friend, Alec? Someone to last your whole life and you his. I suppose such a thing can’t really happen outside sleep.
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
From What I Believe and Other Essays
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Culture had worked in her own case, but during the last few weeks she had doubted whether it humanized the majority, so wide and so widening is the gulf that stretches between the natural and the philosophic man, so many the good chaps who are wrecked in trying to cross it.
From Howards End
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
After all, is not a real Hell better than a manufactured Heaven?
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Yet he was doing a fine thing — proving on how little a soul can exist. Fed neither by Heaven nor by Earth he was going forward, a lamp that would have blown out, were materialism true. He hadn't a God, he hadn't a lover — the two usual incentives to virtue. But on he struggled with his back to ease, because dignity demanded it. There was no one to watch him, nor did he watch himself, but struggles like his are the supreme achievements of humanity, and suppress any legends about Heaven.
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The ethereal past had blinded him, and the highest happiness he could dream was a return to it.
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Life' wrote a friend of mine, 'is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.
From A Room with a View
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.
From Howards End
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He had known so much about her once -what she thought, how she felt, the reasons for her actions. And now he only knew that he loved her, and all the other knowledge seemed passing from him just as he needed it most.
From Where Angels Fear to Tread
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Both times it was loneliness, and the night, and panic afterwards.
From Howards End
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
He had awoken too late for happiness, but not for strength, and could feel an austere joy, as of a warrior who is homeless but stands fully armed.
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I can only do what's easy. I can only entice and be enticed. I can't, and won't, attempt difficult relations. If I marry it will either be a man who's strong enough to boss me or whom I'm strong enough to boss. So I shan't ever marry, for there aren't such men. And Heaven help any one whom I do marry, for I shall certainly run away from him before you can say 'Jack Robinson.
From Howards End
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
They must live outside class, without relations or money; they must work and stick to each other till death. But England belonged to them. That, besides companionship, was their reward. Her air and sky were theirs, not the timorous millions' who own stuffy little boxes, but never their own souls.
From Maurice
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
We reach in desperation beyond the fog, beyond the very stars, the voids of the universe are ransacked to justify the monster, and stamped with a human face. London is religions opportunity--not the decorous religion of theologians, but an anthropomorphic, crude. Yes, the continuous flow would be tolerable if a man of our own sort--not anyone pompous or tearful--were caring for us up in the sky.
From Howards End
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say "yesterday I was happy, today I am not.
From Where Angels Fear to Tread
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Let us think of people as starting life with an experience they forget and ending it with one which they anticipate but cannot understand.
From Aspects of the Novel
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
1
2