E. M. Forster
E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster OM CHwas an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society. Forster's humanistic impulse toward understanding and sympathy may be aptly summed up in the epigraph to his 1910 novel Howards End: "Only connect ... ". His 1908 novel, A Room with a View, is his most optimistic work, while A Passage to Indiabrought him his greatest success. He was...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth1 January 1879
E. M. Forster quotes about
Hope, politeness, the blowing of a nose, the squeak of a boot, all produce "boum.
For you cannot have gentility without paying for it.
But after all, what have we to do with taverns? Real menace belongs to the drawing-room.
Reformers who are obsessed with purity and cannot see that their obsession is impure.
. . . life is sometimes life and sometimes only a drama, and one must learn to distinguish t'other from which . . .
The so called white races are really pinko-grey.
My law-givers are Erasmus and Montaigne, not Moses and St Paul.
Belfastas uncivilised as ever--savage black mothers in houses of dark red brick, friendly manufacturers too drunk to entertain you when you arrive. It amuses me till I get tired.
How do I know what I have to say wntil I see what I have said?
Ulysses ... is a dogged attempt to cover the universe with mud, an inverted Victorianism, an attempt to make crossness and dirt succeed where sweetness and light failed, a simplification of the human character in the interests of Hell.
Some reviews give pain. This is regrettable, but no author has the right to whine. He was not obliged to be an author. He invited publicity, and he must take the publicity that comes along.
I don't know what to think until I see what I've said.
No one is more triumphant than the man who chooses a worthy subject and masters all its facts.
One grows accustomed to being praised, or being blamed, or being advised, but it is unusual to be understood.