It isn't possible to love and to part. E. M. Forster More Quotes by E. M. Forster More Quotes From E. M. Forster I never could get on with representative individuals but people who existed on their own account and with whom it might therefore be possible to be friends. E. M. Forster individual might people I am so used to seeing the sort of play which deals with one man and two women. They do not leave me with the feeling I have made a full theatrical meal they do not give me the experience of the multiplicity of life. E. M. Forster play men two Beauty ought to look a little surprised: it is the emotion that best suits her face. The beauty who does not look surprised, who accepts her position as her due - she reminds us too much of a prima donna. E. M. Forster humor beauty funny We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet. E. M. Forster poverty poet poor Those who prepared for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy. E. M. Forster preparation joy life 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. E. M. Forster personality letters two “It is Fate that I am here,” persisted George. “But you can call it Italy if it makes you less unhappy.” E. M. Forster room-with-a-view fate unhappy Take an old man's word; there's nothing worse than a muddle in all the world. It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror - on the things that I might have avoided. We can help one another but little. I used to think I could teach young people the whole of life, but I know better now, and all my teaching of George has come down to this: beware of muddle. E. M. Forster fate teaching men In Europe life retreats out of the cold, and exquisite fireside myths have resulted—Balder, Persephone—but [in India] the retreat is from the source of life, the treacherous sun, and no poetry adorns it because disillusionment cannot be beautiful. Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form, and India fails to accommodate them. E. M. Forster august beautiful men 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. E. M. Forster eye taken heart 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. E. M. Forster romance essence believe 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. E. M. Forster majority trying men England has always been disinclined to accept human nature. E. M. Forster human-nature england literature Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wishes to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time. E. M. Forster criticism long book Nature pulls one way and human nature another. E. M. Forster howards-end human-nature way I am a Jane Austenite, and therefore slightly imbecile about Jane Austen. My fatuous expression, and airs of personal immunity-how ill they sit on the face, say,of a Stevensonian! But Jane Austen is so different. She is my favourite author! I read and reread, the mouth open and the mind closed. Shut up in measureless content, I greet her by the name of most kind hostess, while criticism slumbers. E. M. Forster expression air names How can the mind take hold of such a country? Generations of invaders have tried, but they remain in exile. The important towns they build are only retreats, their quarrels the malaise of men who cannot find their way home. India knows of their trouble. She knows of the whole world's trouble, to its uttermost depth. She calls "Come" through her hundred mouths, through objects ridiculous and august. But come to what? She has never defined. She is not a promise, only an appeal. E. M. Forster home men country The present flowed by them like a stream. The tree rustled. It had made music before they were born, and would continue after their deaths, but its song was of the moment. The moment had passed. The tree rustled again. Their senses were sharpened, and they seemed to apprehend life. Life passed. The tree rustled again. E. M. Forster moments tree song It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins and blue amorini sport in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons. It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and, close below, Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road. E. M. Forster eye beautiful sports Very notable was his distinction between coarseness and vulgarity, coarseness, revealing something; vulgarity, concealing something. E. M. Forster revealing-something vulgarity-is literature
