336 Quotes by E.M. Forster

Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wishes to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time.

Life' wrote a friend of mine, 'is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.

Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate. Adventures do occur, but not punctually.

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.

Books have to be read (worse luck, for it takes a long time); it is the only way of discovering what they contain.

Mr. Ansell was not merely a man of some education; he had what no education can bring — the power of detecting what is important. Like many fathers, he had spared no expense over his boy, — he had borrowed money to start him at a rapacious and fashionable private school; he had sent him to tutors; he had sent him to Cambridge. But he knew that all this was not the important thing. The important thing was freedom.

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

It is not rubbish! It is the part of people that you do not understand.

How do I know what I think until I see what I say?