She stopped and leant her elbows against the parapet of the embankment. He did likewise. There is at times a magic in identity of position; it is one of the things that have suggested to us eternal comradeship.
E. M. FORSTERThe historian records, but the novelist creates.
More E. M. Forster Quotes
-
-
My 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. FORSTER -
Life is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.
E. M. FORSTER -
Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend.
E. M. FORSTER -
One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.
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 -
A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.
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 anything else which we cannot define.
E. M. FORSTER -
So I shan’t ever marry, for there aren’t such men. And Heaven help any one whom I do marry, for I shall certainly run away from him before you can say ‘Jack Robinson.
E. M. FORSTER -
We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand.
E. M. FORSTER -
If we act the truth the people who really love us are sure to come back to us in the long run
E. M. FORSTER -
She had been so wicked that in all her life she had done only one good deed-given an onion to a beggar. So she went to hell. As she lay in torment she saw the onion, lowered down from heaven by an angel. She caught hold of it. He began to pull her up.
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 wrong way.
E. M. FORSTER -
How can I know what I think till I see what I say?
E. M. FORSTER -
The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then queen died of grief is a plot.
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 -
Unless we remember we cannot understand.
E. M. FORSTER -
Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.
E. M. FORSTER -
You told me once that we shall be judged by our intentions, not by our accomplishments. I thought it a grand remark. But we must intend to accomplish – not sit intending on a chair.
E. M. FORSTER -
It isn’t possible to love and to part.
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 -
Books have to be read it is the only way of discovering what they contain.
E. M. FORSTER -
Nonsense and beauty have close connections.
E. M. FORSTER -
The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world.
E. M. FORSTER -
Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
E. M. FORSTER -
Science is better than sympathy, if only it is science.
E. M. FORSTER -
There’s never any great risk as long as you have money.
E. M. FORSTER