336 Quotes by E.M. Forster

All of us, even the sophisticated, yearn for permanence, and to the unsophisticated permanence is the chief excuse for a work of art.

While the Gods are powerful, we learn little about them. It is only in their day of decadence that a strong light beats into heaven.

People turned out to be alive. Hitherto he had supposed that they were what he pretended to be - flat pieces of cardboard stamped with a conventional design… there came by no process of reason a conviction that they were human beings with feelings akin to his own.

The Waves is an extraordinary achievement ... It is trembling on the edge. A little less - and it would lose its poetry. A little more - and it would be over into the abyss, and be dull and arty. It is her greatest book.

Expansion. That is the idea the novelist must cling to. Not completion. Not rounding off, but opening out.

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

Well, it is odd and sad that our minds should be such seed-beds, and we without power to choose the seed. But man is an odd, sad creature as yet, intent on pilfering the earth, and heedless of the growths within himself.

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

The human mind is not a dignified organ, and I do not see how we can exercise it sincerely except through eclecticism. And the only advice I would offer my fellow eclectics is: "Do not be proud of your inconsistency. It is a pity, it is a pity that we should be equipped like this. It is a pity that Man cannot be at the same time impressive and truthful.