690 Quotes by E. M. Forster

London was but a foretaste of this nomadic civilization which is altering human nature so profoundly, and throws upon personal relations a stress greater than they have ever borne before. Under cosmopolitanism, if it comes, we shall receive no help from the earth. Trees and meadows and mountains will only be a spectacle, and the binding force that once exercised on character must be entrusted to Love alone. May Love be equal to the task!

He was thinking of the irony of friendship – so strong it is, and so fragile. We fly together, like straws in an eddy, to part in the open stream.

No one, except Ronny, had any idea of what passed in her mind, and he only dimly, for where there is officialism every human relationship suffers.

My father says that there is only one perfect view – the view of the sky straight over our heads, and that all these views on earth are but bungled copies of it.

While her lips talked culture, her heart was planning to invite him to tea.

I was yours once ’till death if you’d cared to keep me, but I’m someone else’s now – I can’t hang about whining forever – and he’s mine in a way that shocks you, but why don’t you stop being shocked, and attend to your own happiness?

You show so very clearly that intelligence and sympathy are superficial – good enough things in their way – they do what they can and would gladly do more; but the real thing is “being there”, and the worst of it is, no two human beings can be in the same place.

I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I’d like to be.

And Englishmen like posing as gods.