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. FORSTERHuman relations are impossible. When they are real they are uncomfortable, and when they are comfortable they are unreal. It was for the journey into solitude that the human soul was created.
More E. M. Forster Quotes
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One grows accustomed to being praised, or being blamed, or being advised, but it is unusual to be understood.
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I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals.
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It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and, close below, Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road.
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It 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.
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Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.
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For it is a serious thing to have been watched. We all radiate something curiously intimate when we believe ourselves to be alone.
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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.
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The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.
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When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.
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Don’t be mysterious; there isn’t the time.
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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.
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Have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet at the same time – beautiful?
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It is so difficult – at least, I find it difficult – to understand people who speak the truth.
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There is an aristocracy of the sensitive. They represent the true human tradition of permanent victory over cruelty and chaos.
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The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul.
E. M. FORSTER