E.M. Forster quote: "I only know what it is that's wrong with him; not why it is." And what is it?" asked Lucy fearfully, expecting some harrowing tale. The old trouble; things won't fit." What things?" The things of the universe. It's quite true. They don't." Oh Mr. Emerson, whatever do you mean?" In his ordinary voice, so that she scarcely realized he was quoting poetry, he said: "'From far, from eve and morning, And yon twelve-winded sky, The stuff of life to knit me Blew hither: here am I." George and I both know this, but why does it distress him? We know that we come from the winds, and that we shall return to them; that all of life is perhaps a knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness. But why should this make us unhappy? Let us rather love one another, and work and rejoice. I don't believe in this world of sorrow."

Few travelled in these days, for, thanks to the advance of science, the earth was exactly alike all ...
E.M. FORSTER

And Englishmen like posing as gods.
E.M. FORSTER

We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to sav...
E.M. FORSTER

Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
E.M. FORSTER

It isn't possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, mu...
E.M. FORSTER

Only connect!
E.M. FORSTER

How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?
E.M. FORSTER

The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but...
E.M. FORSTER

Then she lay on her back and gazed at the cloudless sky. Mr. Beebe, whose opinion of her rose daily,...
E.M. FORSTER

In daily life we never understand each other, neither complete clairvoyance nor complete confessiona...
E.M. FORSTER

It is so difficult - at least, I find it difficult - to understand people who speak the truth.
E.M. FORSTER

Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wishes to convince others and him...
E.M. FORSTER

How do I know what I think until I see what I say?
E.M. FORSTER

The Arts are not drugs. They are not guaranteed to act when taken. Something as mysterious and capri...
E.M. FORSTER

She thought not so much of what had happened as of how she could describe it.
E.M. FORSTER

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for...
E.M. FORSTER

Words deserted him immediately. He could only speak when he was not asked to.
E.M. FORSTER

While the Gods are powerful, we learn little about them. It is only in their day of decadence that a...
E.M. FORSTER

Nothing ever happens to me, " she reflected..... An older person at such an hour and in such a place...
E.M. FORSTER

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order...
E.M. FORSTER

Lucy's Sabbath was generally of this amphibious nature. She kept it without hypocrisy in the morning...
E.M. FORSTER

They sowed the duller vegetables first, and a pleasant feeling of righteous fatigue stole over them ...
E.M. FORSTER

I believe in aristocracy, though -- if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an ...
E.M. FORSTER

You do care a little for me, I know... but nothing to speak of, and you don't love me. I was yours o...
E.M. FORSTER

My father says that there is only one perfect view — the view of the sky straight over our heads, ...
E.M. FORSTER

They had nothing in common but the English language.
E.M. FORSTER

She grew more and more vexed with his dignified behavior. By a cruel irony, she was drawing out what...
E.M. FORSTER

There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshiper may one da...
E.M. FORSTER

To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art.
E.M. FORSTER

If human nature does alter it will be because individuals manage to look at themselves in a new way....
E.M. FORSTER

When I think of what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love; it is one of the moments for ...
E.M. FORSTER

Was Mrs. Wilcox one of the unsatisfactory people- there are many of them- who dangle intimacy and th...
E.M. FORSTER

Why children?' he asked. 'Why always children? For love to end where it begins is far more beautiful...
E.M. FORSTER

I taught him, 'he quavered, "to trust in love. I said:'when love comes, that is reality.' I said: 'P...
E.M. FORSTER

The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.
E.M. FORSTER

I have almost completed a long novel, but it is unpublishable until my death and England's.
E.M. FORSTER

After all, is not a real Hell better than a manufactured Heaven?
E.M. FORSTER

Eccolo!” he exclaimed.

At the same moment the ground gave way, and with a cry she fell ...
E.M. FORSTER

If you pass life by it's jolly well going to pass you by in the future. If you're frightened it's al...
E.M. FORSTER

It is not difficult to stand above the conventions when we leave no hostages among them; men can alw...
E.M. FORSTER

It's not what people do to you, but what they mean, that hurts.
E.M. FORSTER

It all turns on affection now," said Margaret. "Affection. Don't you see?... And affection, when rec...
E.M. FORSTER

We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the stat...
E.M. FORSTER

... there are shadows because there are hills.
E.M. FORSTER

I have no profession. It is another example of my decadence. My attitude - quite an indefensible one...
E.M. FORSTER

They wept for humanity, those two, not for themselves. They could not bear that this should be the e...
E.M. FORSTER

Did you ever dream you had a friend, Alec? Someone to last your whole life and you his. I suppose su...
E.M. FORSTER

When we were only acquaintances, you let me be myself, but now you're always protecting me... I won'...
E.M. FORSTER

Vashti was seized with the terrors of direct experience. She shrank back into the room, and the wall...
E.M. FORSTER

You talk as if a god had made the Machine," cried the other. "I believe that you pray to it when you...
E.M. FORSTER

Nature pulls one way and human nature another.
E.M. FORSTER

Most of us are pseudo-scholars...for we are a very large and quite a powerful class, eminent in Chur...
E.M. FORSTER

Mr. Herriton, don’t – please, Mr. Herriton – a dentist. His father’s a dentist.”
Phi...
E.M. FORSTER

…But so few of us think clearly about our own private incomes, and admit that independent thoughts...
E.M. FORSTER

Most of the inhabitants of India do not mind how India is governed. Nor are the lower animals of Eng...
E.M. FORSTER

Adventures do occur, but not punctually.
E.M. FORSTER

The issues Miss Quested had raised were so much more important than she was herself that people inev...
E.M. FORSTER

The house was very quiet, and the fog ... pressed against the windows like an excluded ghost.
E.M. FORSTER

Don't go fighting against the Spring.
E.M. FORSTER

It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of re...
E.M. FORSTER

Of course he despised the world as a whole; every thoughtful man should; it is almost a test of refi...
E.M. FORSTER

It was not that ladies were inferior to men; it was that they were different. Their mission was to i...
E.M. FORSTER

One doesn't come to Italy for niceness," was the retort; "one comes for life. Buon giorno! Buon gior...
E.M. FORSTER

There is much that is immortal in this medieval lady. The dragons have gone, and so have the knights...
E.M. FORSTER

...though nothing is damaged, everything is changed.
E.M. FORSTER

No, he is not tactful, yet have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most ...
E.M. FORSTER

At times our need for a sympathetic gesture is so great that we care not what exactly it signifies o...
E.M. FORSTER

The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intell...
E.M. FORSTER

Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there?
E.M. FORSTER

She only felt that the candle would burn better, the packing go easier, the world be happier, if she...
E.M. FORSTER

Take an old man's word; there's nothing worse than a muddle in all the world. It is easy to face Dea...
E.M. FORSTER

Passion should believe itself irresistible. It should forget civility and consideration and all the ...
E.M. FORSTER

She stopped and leant her elbows against the parapet of the embankment. He did likewise. There is at...
E.M. FORSTER

By the side of the everlasting Why there is a Yes--a transitory Yes if you like, but a Yes.
E.M. FORSTER

Life' wrote a friend of mine, 'is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the in...
E.M. FORSTER

It is fate that I am here,' George persisted, 'but you can call it Italy if it makes you less unhapp...
E.M. FORSTER

Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.
E.M. FORSTER

Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them...
E.M. FORSTER

This desire to govern a woman -- it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together.... But...
E.M. FORSTER

Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.
E.M. FORSTER

I am an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.
E.M. FORSTER

One minute. You know nothing about him. He probably has his own joys and interests- wife, children, ...
E.M. FORSTER

So never give in,” continued the girl, and restated again and again the vague yet convincing plea ...
E.M. FORSTER

He built up a situation that was far enough from the truth. It never occurred to him that Helen was ...
E.M. FORSTER

Don't believe those lies about intellectual people. They're only written to soothe the majority.
E.M. FORSTER

With the first jolt he was in daylight; they had left the gateways of King’s Cross, and were under...
E.M. FORSTER

It comes to this then: there always have been people like me and always will be, and generally they ...
E.M. FORSTER

They had never struggled, and only a struggle twists sentimentality and lust together into love.
E.M. FORSTER

A happy ending was imperative. I shouldn't have bothered to write otherwise. I was determined that i...
E.M. FORSTER

He had a theory that musicians are incredibly complex, and know far less than other artists what the...
E.M. FORSTER

This solitude opressed her; she was accustomed to have her thoughts confirmed by others or, at all e...
E.M. FORSTER

She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own soul, and in the soul of every man...
E.M. FORSTER

The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous,...
E.M. FORSTER

She could not explain in so many words, but she felt that those who prepare for all the emergencies ...
E.M. FORSTER

Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him.
E.M. FORSTER

But the poetry of that kiss, the wonder of it, the magic that there was in life for hours after it--...
E.M. FORSTER

Some leave our life with tears, others with an insane frigidity; Mrs. Wilcox had taken the middle co...
E.M. FORSTER

Away she hurried, not beautiful, not supremely brilliant, but filled with something that took the pl...
E.M. FORSTER

Life's very difficult and full of surprises. At all events, I've got as far as that. To be humble an...
E.M. FORSTER

And the goblins--they had not really been there at all? They were only the phantoms of cowardice and...
E.M. FORSTER

People have their own deaths as well as their own lives, and even if there is nothing beyond death, ...
E.M. FORSTER

She hated war and liked soldiers—it was one of her amiable inconsistencies.
E.M. FORSTER

Science explained people, but could not understand them.
E.M. FORSTER

There's never any great risk as long as you have money.
E.M. FORSTER

I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.
E.M. FORSTER

It is thus, if there is any rule, that we ought to die--neither as victim nor as fanatic, but as the...
E.M. FORSTER

If we lived for ever, what you say would be true. But we have to die, we have to leave life presentl...
E.M. FORSTER

She must be assured that it is not a criminal offense to love at first sight.
E.M. FORSTER

It is only that people are far more different than is pretended. All over the world men and women ar...
E.M. FORSTER

Margaret realized the chaotic nature of our daily life, and its difference from the orderly sequence...
E.M. FORSTER

All men are equal - all men, that is, who possess umbrellas.
E.M. FORSTER

To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it.
E.M. FORSTER

What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our d...
E.M. FORSTER

A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy d...
E.M. FORSTER

The crime of suicide lies rather in its disregard for the feelings of those whom we leave behind.
E.M. FORSTER

Oh, the English! They are always thinking of tea. They carry it by the kilogram, and they are so clu...
E.M. FORSTER

While her lips talked culture, her heart was planning to invite him to tea
E.M. FORSTER

It is the starved imagination, not the well-nourished, that is afraid.
E.M. FORSTER

It makes a difference, doesn't it, whether we fence ourselves in, or whether we are fenced out by th...
E.M. FORSTER

…to descend from bright heaven to earth, whereon there are shadows because there are hills…
E.M. FORSTER

A friendliness, as of dwarfs shaking hands, was in the air...
E.M. FORSTER

He never even thought of tenderness and emotion; his considerations about Durham remained cold. Durh...
E.M. FORSTER

If I had to choose between betraying my country or betraying my friend, I hope I should have the GUT...
E.M. FORSTER (18TH CENTURY WRITER)

The preacher must have, "bonds of a servant with the spirit of a king, a king in high, royal, indepe...
E.M. BOUNDS

God’s revelation does not need the light of human genius, the polish and strength of human culture...
E.M. BOUNDS

The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.
E.M. BOUNDS

Our devotions are not measured by the clock, but time is of the essence. The ability to wait, and st...
E.M. BOUNDS

What the Church needs to-day is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and nove...
E.M. BOUNDS

Here's to real heroes, not the ones who carry us off into the sunset but the ones who help us choose...
E.M. TIPPETTS

The pain is real. Flowing as a brook beneath my flesh. I am broken, and yet, I still breathe.
E.M. BENTON

The key thing is that you start every film from sort of a blank page, almost like you discover it li...
MARC FORSTER

Genius is the power of lighting one's own fire.
JOHN FORSTER

Genius and its rewards are briefly told: A liberal nature and a niggard doom, A difficult jour...
JOHN FORSTER

You can win it in the late innings if you never quit.
ROBERT FORSTER

I write in the morning, I walk in the afternoon and I read in the evening. It's a very easy, lov...
MARGARET FORSTER

Every shot is unique, even if it's just a close-up, an insert of your hand. You've got to wo...
ROBERT FORSTER

God's always got a custard pie up his sleeve.
MARGARET FORSTER

You have to have energy off the bench. That's an area we can get an advantage, so our reserves have ...
CHRIS FORSTER

I might be damned today, but tomorrow I promise you'll be taking my place.
KALEY FORSTER

For me, 'The Kite Runner' became about a guy who's emotionally shut down because he hasn...
MARC FORSTER

You've got to internalize the character. You've got to learn the words. These are separate t...
ROBERT FORSTER

It's what you do every time. You isolate what you know, and you create a mental image of what yo...
ROBERT FORSTER

Three days after my brother died, my father was in the hospital. He just did not want to live anymor...
MARC FORSTER

On 'Stranger Than Fiction,' the script was so good that I stuck to every line because it was...
MARC FORSTER

Take Shaun White. A rider of his stature has so many opportunities on and off the board that a team ...
JEREMY FORSTER

I never have that 'we were robbed' feeling when looking around now at where some of our contemporari...
ROBERT FORSTER

The scholarship of Christian academics isn’t recognized as scholarship at all unless it conforms t...
GREG FORSTER

To sustain moral behavior, people need more than simply a list of rules. They need to be people who ...
GREG FORSTER

There is an obvious advantage to the UK industry if its beef is sold in a different section of the c...
ROBERT FORSTER

I do try to be resentful, I really do, but I just can't bring myself to do it.
ROBERT FORSTER

The other thing about this reunion tour is that we're not all being represented by different lawyers...
ROBERT FORSTER

I do try to be resentful, I really do, but I just can't bring myself to do it.
ROBERT FORSTER

It will be the same story as the past two games - we'll see if quick can beat big. We have to make t...
DAVE FORSTER

Our defense did it. In the fourth quarter they were tired, their shots were short. But our offensive...
DAVE FORSTER

The girls were dead-dog excited. We're a little bit worn out but excited, too. We've been close in t...
DAVE FORSTER

A lot better to play like this and win compared to last year. And we hope to carry over the way we s...
DAVE FORSTER

The score was the same, but almost everything else was completely different,
JOHN FORSTER

It's just a transition period. April can still bring some (snowy) stuff here when it gets pretty col...
GARY FORSTER

It's so empowering for that to happen under the supervision of young adults who aren't their parents...
GARY FORSTER

Good camps fulfill a parent's number one concern -- safety -- while supplying experiences and lesson...
GARY FORSTER

What exactly constitutes an emergency in a modelling agency? Two girls fighting to death with a hair...
KATE FORSTER

Liberals and conservatives tend to view the economy in purely materialistic terms. They make growth,...
GREG FORSTER

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for...
E. M. FORSTER

We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand.
E. M. FORSTER

What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our d...
E. M. FORSTER

To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the ...
E. M. FORSTER

History develops, art stands still.
E. M. FORSTER

How can I know what I think till I see what I say?
E. M. FORSTER

I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.
E. M. FORSTER

Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think, creation's.
E. M. FORSTER

We are all like Scheherazade's husband, in that we want to know what happens next.
E. M. FORSTER

The fact is we can only love what we know personally. And we cannot know much. In public affairs, in...
E. M. FORSTER

Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.
E. M. FORSTER

Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.
E. M. FORSTER

Oxford is Oxford: not a mere receptacle for youth, like Cambridge. Perhaps it wants its inmates to l...
E. M. FORSTER

Two cheers for Democracy; one because it admits variety, and two because it permits criticism.
E. M. FORSTER

Love is always being given where it is not required.
E. M. FORSTER

The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in...
E. M. FORSTER

Only a struggle twists sentimentality and lust together into love.
E. M. FORSTER

I'm a holy man minus the holiness.
E. M. FORSTER

A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing ...
E. M. FORSTER

The idea that nations should love one another, or that business concerns or marketing boards should ...
E. M. FORSTER

Death destroys a man, the idea of Death saves him.
E. M. FORSTER

The final test for a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of an...
E. M. FORSTER

Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.
E. M. FORSTER

Unless we remember we cannot understand.
E. M. FORSTER

We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the stat...
E. M. FORSTER

Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
E. M. FORSTER

America is rather like life. You can usually find in it what you look for. It will probably be inter...
E. M. FORSTER

There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one d...
E. M. FORSTER

Beauty ought to look a little surprised: it is the emotion that best suits her face. The beauty who ...
E. M. FORSTER

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both wil...
E. M. FORSTER

Towns are excrescences, gray fluxions, where men, hurrying to find one another, have lost themselves...
E. M. FORSTER

I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people...
E. M. FORSTER

Ideas are fatal to caste.
E. M. FORSTER

Art for art's sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orde...
E. M. FORSTER

Failure or success seem to have been allotted to men by their stars. But they retain the power of wr...
E. M. FORSTER

As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through e...
E. M. FORSTER

Oxford is -- Oxford: not a mere receptacle for youth, like Cambridge. Perhaps it wants its inmates t...
E. M. FORSTER

Lord I disbelieve -- help thou my unbelief.
E. M. FORSTER

E.M. Forster

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