The sort of poetry I seek only resides in objects Man can’t touch – like England ‘s grass network of lanes 100 years ago, but today he can destroy them and only Lord Farrer keeps him from doing it.
E. M. FORSTERDo 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.
More E. M. Forster Quotes
-
-
There’s never any great risk as long as you have money.
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 -
The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.
E. M. FORSTER -
One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.
E. M. FORSTER -
School was the unhappiest time of my life and the worst trick it ever played on me was to pretend that it was the world in miniature. For it hindered me from discovering how lovely and delightful and kind the world can be, and how much of it is intelligible.
E. M. FORSTER -
Money pads the edges of things.
E. M. FORSTER -
It’s not what people do to you, but what they mean, that hurts.
E. M. FORSTER -
Sometimes I think too much fuss is made about marriage. Century after century of carnal embracement and we’re still no nearer to understanding one another.
E. M. FORSTER -
One grows accustomed to being praised, or being blamed, or being advised, but it is unusual to be understood.
E. M. FORSTER -
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.
E. M. FORSTER -
But 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. FORSTER -
I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man’s pleasure when they come a cropper.
E. M. FORSTER -
There are moments when the inner life actually ‘pays,’ when years of self-scrutiny, conducted for no ulterior motive, are suddenly of practical use.
E. M. FORSTER -
The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world.
E. M. FORSTER -
The other damned saw what was happening and caught hold of it too. She was indignant and cried, “Let go-it’s my onion,” and as soon as she said, “my onion,” the stalk broke and she fell back into the flames.
E. M. FORSTER






