Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.
E. M. FORSTERCreative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.
E. M. FORSTERShe 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. FORSTERI 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. FORSTERIt is so difficult – at least, I find it difficult – to understand people who speak the truth.
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. FORSTERThe 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. FORSTERThe emotions may be endless. The more we express them, the more we may have to express.
E. M. FORSTERThe main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.
E. M. FORSTERHow can I know what I think till I see what I say?
E. M. FORSTERMy conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it.
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. FORSTERThe four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.
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.
E. M. FORSTERIt 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. FORSTEROne grows accustomed to being praised, or being blamed, or being advised, but it is unusual to be understood.
E. M. FORSTER