Quotes By E. M. Forster
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.
E. M. Forster
One marvels why the middle classes still insist on so much discomfort for their children at such expense to themselves.
E. M. Forster
Very notable was his distinction between coarseness and vulgarity, coarseness, revealing something; vulgarity, concealing something.
E. M. Forster
But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to merge in something else.
E. M. Forster
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.
E. M. Forster
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.
E. M. Forster
If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
E. M. Forster
So, two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism.
E. M. Forster
The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead. He can only gain that conception through personal experience, and he can only use his personal experiences when he is a genius.
E. M. Forster
I 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. Forster
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.
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.
E. M. Forster
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.
E. M. Forster