Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
E. M. FORSTERSpoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
E. M. FORSTERMy temple stands not upon Mount Moriah but in the Elysian Field where even the immoral are admitted. My motto is ‘Lord, I disbelieve – help thou my unbelief.
E. M. FORSTERIt isn’t possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.
E. M. FORSTERI have no mystic faith in the people. I have in the individual.
E. M. FORSTEROnly a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.
E. M. FORSTERIt’s not what people do to you, but what they mean, that hurts.
E. M. FORSTEROne grows accustomed to being praised, or being blamed, or being advised, but it is unusual to be understood.
E. M. FORSTEROne always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.
E. M. FORSTERIt 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.
E. M. FORSTERIf I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
E. M. FORSTERDon’t be mysterious; there isn’t the time.
E. M. FORSTERMost of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talks that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence.
E. M. FORSTERWe must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
E. M. FORSTEROutside the arch, always there seemed another arch. And beyond the remotest echo, a silence.
E. M. FORSTERBut Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.
E. M. FORSTERThe four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.
E. M. FORSTER