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. E. M. Forster More Quotes by E. M. Forster More Quotes From E. M. Forster Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown E. M. Forster howards-end gates glorious 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. E. M. Forster creative men art Reverence is fatal to literature. E. M. Forster reverence literature Romance only dies with life. No pair of pincers will ever pull it out of us. But there is a spurious sentiment which cannot resist the unexpected and the incongruous and the grotesque. A touch will loosen it, and the sooner it goes from us the better. E. M. Forster pairs unexpected romance The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death. E. M. Forster sleep food life ...the true spirit of gastronomic joylessness. Porridge fills the Englishman up, and prunes clear him out. E. M. Forster cooking spirit food If human nature does alter it will be because individuals manage to look at themselves in a new way. Here and there people - a very few people, but a few novelists are among them - are trying to do this. Every institution and vested interest in against such a search: organized religion, the state, the family in its economic aspect, have nothing to gain, and it is only when outward prohibitions weaken that it can proceed: history conditions it to that extent. E. M. Forster atheism trying people 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. E. M. Forster howards-end wells people Books have to be read it is the only way of discovering what they contain. E. M. Forster assimilation book way I'm a holy man minus the holiness. E. M. Forster holiness literature men They had nothing in common but the English language. E. M. Forster english-language language common History develops, art stands still. E. M. Forster literature history art Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvellous than the land. E. M. Forster land literature people Charm, in most men and nearly all women, is a decoration. E. M. Forster charm literature men The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists. E. M. Forster perfect facts art Axiom : Novel must have either one living character or a perfect pattern: fails otherwise. E. M. Forster patterns perfect character 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 entering eye victim Words deserted him immediately. He could only speak when he was not asked to. E. M. Forster deserted speak For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better. E. M. Forster vanity changed character She loved him absolutely, perhaps for half an hour. E. M. Forster hours half
