Quotes By E. M. Forster

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man.

No man can be an agnostic who has a sense of humour.

Two cheers for Democracy; one because it admits variety, and two because it permits criticism.

Nonsense and beauty have close connections.

The sadness of the incomplete, the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art.

Paganism is infectious, more infectious than diphtheria or piety.

Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvellous than the land.

No one is India.

One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.

Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.

I am so used to seeing the sort of play which deals with one man and two women. They do not leave me with the feeling I have made a full theatrical meal they do not give me the experience of the multiplicity of life.

One marvels why the middle classes still insist on so much discomfort for their children at such expense to themselves.

I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.

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.

I have no mystic faith in the people. I have in the individual.

But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to merge in something else.

Very notable was his distinction between coarseness and vulgarity, coarseness, revealing something; vulgarity, concealing something.

Liking one person is an extra reason for liking another.

Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.

One is certain of nothing but the truth of one's own emotions.

The 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.

There is much good luck in the world, but it is luck. We are none of us safe. We are children, playing or quarrelling on the line.

A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.

There is something majestic in the bad taste of Italy.

We are all like Scheherazade's husband, in that we want to know what happens next.

Tolerance is a very dull virtue. It is boring. Unlike love, it has always had a bad press. It is negative. It merely means putting up with people, being able to stand things.

So, two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism.

People have their own deaths as well as their own lives, and even if there is nothing beyond death, we shall differ in our nothingness.

If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.