E.M. Forster Quotes
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.
The emotions may be endless. The more we express them, the more we may have to express.
The English countryside, its growth and its destruction, is a genuine and tragic theme.
We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet.
At times our need for a sympathetic gesture is so great that we care not what exactly it signifies or how much we may have to pay for it afterwards.
For it is a serious thing to have been watched. We all radiate something curiously intimate when we believe ourselves to be alone.
The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists.
I think directing is part play, part work, not just all work, because I think you always have to play. I think that's ultimately why I got into making movies, is because I love to play.
A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.
The sadness of the incomplete, the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art.
As her time in Florence drew to a close she was only at ease amongst those to whom she felt indifferent.
I do like Christmas on the whole.... In its clumsy way, it does approach Peace and Goodwill. But it is clumsier every year.
It is easy to sympathize at a distance,' said an old gentleman with a beard. 'I value more the kind word that is spoken close to my ear.
Expansion, that is the idea the novelist must cling to, not completion, not rounding off, but opening out.
When I think of what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love; it is one of the moments for which the world was made.
Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly; they are still entangled with the desire for ownership.
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.
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.
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.
Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its highest. Live in fragments no longer
I think you’re beautiful, the only beautiful person I’ve ever seen. I love your voice and everything to do with you, down to your clothes or the room you are sitting in. I adore you.
Those who prepared for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy.
Axiom : Novel must have either one living character or a perfect pattern: fails otherwise.
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man.
The more highly public life is organized the lower does its morality sink.
When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.
Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wishes to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time.
Do not be proud of your inconsistency. It is a pity, it is a pity that we should be equipped like this. It is a pity that Man cannot be at the same time impressive and truthful.
Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them.
One of the evils of money is that it tempts us to look at it rather than at the things that it buys.