690 Quotes by E. M. Forster

The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say "yesterday I was happy, today I am not.

The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death." "We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

He had shown her all the workings of his soul, mistaking this for love.

I think - I think - I think how little they think what lies so near them.

Human beings have their great chance in the novel.

It is impossible to foretell the future with any degree of accuracy, that it is impossible to rehearse life. A fault in the scenery, a face in the audience, an interruption of the audience on to the stage, and all our carefully planned gesture mean nothing, or mean too much.

But I have seen my obstacles: trivialities, learning and poetry. This last needs explaining: the old artist's readiness to dissolve characters into a haze. Characters cannot come alive and fight and guide the world unless the novelist wants them to remain characters.

I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it — and I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil. I don't die — I don't fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there.

Growing old is an emotion which comes over us at almost any age; I had it myself between the ages of 25 and 30.