E.M. Forster Quotes

Surely the only sound foundation for a civilization is a sound state of mind.

The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected.

To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it.

The crime of suicide lies rather in its disregard for the feelings of those whom we leave behind.

If Miss Honeychurch ever takes to live as she plays, it will be very exciting--both for us and for her.

There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer.

I never could get on with representative individuals but people who existed on their own account and with whom it might therefore be possible to be friends.

Chess is a forcing house where the fruits of character can ripen more fully than in life

I do not believe in Belief.

Curiosity is one of the lowest of the human faculties. You will have noticed in daily life that when people are inquisitive they nearly always have bad memories and are usually stupid at bottom.

Their quarrel was no more surprising than are most quarrels — inevitable at the time, incredible afterwards.

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.

The woman who can't influence her husband to vote the way she wants ought to be ashamed of herself.

Only a struggle twists sentimentality and lust together into love.

I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.

One of the main reasons I wanted to work on 'World War Z' was because I'm a huge fan of the book, and I love the idea of taking a non-linear story and creating a three-act structure out of it.

Three days after my brother died, my father was in the hospital. He just did not want to live anymore. Before, he was fighting and loving life.

I absolutely adored Wuthering Heights and fell in love with Heathcliff as most girls do.

I won't be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult.

Men were not gods after all, but as human and as clumsy as girls.

Money pads the edges of things.

He doesn't want you to be real, and to think and to live. He doesn't love you. But I love you. I want you to have your own thoughts and ideas and feelings, even when I hold you in my arms.

Passion does not blind. No. Passion is sanity, and the woman you love, she is the only person you will ever really understand.

Science, when applied to personal relationships, is always just wrong .

Nature pulls one way and human nature another.

It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror--on thethings that I might have avoided.

My law-givers are Erasmus and Montaigne, not Moses and St Paul.

Are not beauty and delicacy the same?

By the side of the everlasting Why there is a Yes--a transitory Yes if you like, but a Yes.

Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there?

“It is Fate that I am here,” persisted George. “But you can call it Italy if it makes you less unhappy.”

It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness.

I realized that a lot of the great directors that I admire from [Ingmar] Bergman to [Fredrico] Fellini re always shooting, then going into the editing room, and shooting again.

I always wanted to do an action movie, not particularly Bond.

I think people, unfortunately, do live in constant fear.

One grows accustomed to being praised, or being blamed, or being advised, but it is unusual to be understood.

Give, do not lend; after death who will thank you?

Though life is very glorious, it is difficult.

Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work.

No one is more triumphant than the man who chooses a worthy subject and masters all its facts.

Sometimes I think too much fuss is made about marriage. Century after century of carnal embracement and we're still no nearer to understanding one another.

There has been, is, and always will be every conceivable type of person.

You want to love everyone equally, and that's worse than impossible--it's wrong.

Solidity, caution, integrity, efficiency. Lack of imagination, hypocrisy. These qualities characterize the middle classes in everycountry, but in England they are national characteristics.

English literature is a flying fish.

We may divide characters into flat and round.

This element of surprise or mystery the detective element as it is sometimes rather emptily called is of great importance in a plot.

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

Let us think of people as starting life with an experience they forget and ending it with one which they anticipate but cannot understand.

Science is better than sympathy, if only it is science.