Outside the arch, always there seemed another arch. And beyond the remotest echo, a silence.
E. M. FORSTEROutside the arch, always there seemed another arch. And beyond the remotest echo, a silence.
E. M. FORSTERFaith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch, which ought to be applied as sparingly as possible. I dislike the stuff. I do not believe in it, for its own sake, at all… My lawgivers are Erasmus and Montaigne, not Moses and St Paul.
E. M. FORSTERI have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I’d like to be.
E. M. FORSTERLife is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.
E. M. FORSTERThough life is very glorious, it is difficult.
E. M. FORSTERDon’t begin with proportion. Only prigs do that. Let proportion come in as a last resource, when the better things have failed.
E. M. FORSTERI think you’re beautiful, the only beautiful person I’ve ever seen. I love your voice and everything to do with you, down to your clothes or the room you are sitting in. I adore you.
E. M. FORSTERHave you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet at the same time – beautiful?
E. M. FORSTERNonsense and beauty have close connections.
E. M. FORSTERIf we act the truth the people who really love us are sure to come back to us in the long run
E. M. FORSTERThere is an aristocracy of the sensitive. They represent the true human tradition of permanent victory over cruelty and chaos.
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. FORSTERThe historian records, but the novelist creates.
E. M. FORSTER… there are shadows because there are hills.
E. M. FORSTERThe armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul.
E. M. FORSTERWhat is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.
E. M. FORSTER