Quotes By E. M. Forster

The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then queen died of grief is a plot.

We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.

The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.

The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.

Be soft, even if you stand to get squashed.

Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.

Reverence is fatal to literature.

America is rather like life. You can usually find in it what you look for. It will probably be interesting, and it is sure to be large.

Only a struggle twists sentimentality and lust together into love.

What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?

There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer.

The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists.

Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.

Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think, creation's.

England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.

The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.

We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand.

I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.

We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet.

History develops, art stands still.

To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.

Only people who have been allowed to practise freedom can have the grown-up look in their eyes.

Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return.

At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.

The fact is we can only love what we know personally. And we cannot know much. In public affairs, in the rebuilding of civilization, something less dramatic and emotional is needed, namely tolerance.

What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.

The woman who can't influence her husband to vote the way she wants ought to be ashamed of herself.

One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.

Love is always being given where it is not required.

Surely the only sound foundation for a civilization is a sound state of mind.