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. FORSTERShe 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. FORSTERLove is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work.
E. M. FORSTERThe historian records, but the novelist creates.
E. M. FORSTERThe people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.
E. M. FORSTERThere are periods in the most thrilling day during which nothing happens, and though we continue to exclaim, “I do enjoy myself”, or , “I am horrified,” we are insincere.
E. M. FORSTERBut it struck him that people are not really dead until they are felt to be dead. As long as there is some misunderstanding about them, they possess a sort of immortality.
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. FORSTERThere is an aristocracy of the sensitive. They represent the true human tradition of permanent victory over cruelty and chaos.
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. FORSTERLife is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.
E. M. FORSTERThe 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. FORSTEROne has two duties – to be worried and not to be worried.
E. M. FORSTERThe only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.
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. FORSTERBooks have to be read it is the only way of discovering what they contain.
E. M. FORSTER