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
Human relations are impossible. When they are real they are uncomfortable, and when they are comfortable they are unreal. It was for the journey into solitude that the human soul was created.
Lucy was suffering from the most grievous wrong which this world has yet discovered: diplomatic advantage had been taken of her sincerity, of her craving for sympathy and love. Such a wrong is not easily forgotten. Never again did she expose herself without due consideration and precaution against rebuff. And such a wrong may react disastrously upon the soul.
I only wish the poets would say this too: love is of the body; not the body, but of the the body. Ah! the misery that would be saved if we confessed that! Ah! for a little directness to liberate the soul!
But the body is deeper than the soul and its secrets inscrutable.
He had shown her all the workings of his soul, mistaking this for love.
The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul.
My conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it.
At the side of the everlasting why, is a yes, and a yes, and a yes.
Two cheers for Democracy; one because it admits variety, and two because it permits criticism.
We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.
Human beings have their great chance in the novel.
Science explained people, but could not understand them. After long centuries among the bones and muscles it might be advancing to knowledge of the nerves, but this would never give understanding
Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.