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. FORSTERTo make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.
More E. M. Forster Quotes
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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.
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Adventures do occur, but not punctually.
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Human 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.
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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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The historian records, but the novelist creates.
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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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It makes a difference doesn’t it, whether we fully fence ourselves in, or whether we are fenced out by the barriers of others?
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How can I know what I think till I see what I say?
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Books have to be read it is the only way of discovering what they contain.
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Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don’t believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art’s sake.
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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.
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There are moments when the inner life actually ‘pays,’ when years of self-scrutiny, conducted for no ulterior motive, are suddenly of practical use.
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The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.
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Faith, 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.
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One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.
E. M. FORSTER