M. Forster
M. Forster
people wish novelists
People in a novel can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist wishes; their inner as well as their outer life can be exposed.
past clouds students
Pity wraps the student of the past in an ambrosial cloud, and washes his limbs with eternal youth.
sex age mating
Sex begins before adolescence, and survives sterility; it is indeed coeval with our lives, although at the mating age its effects are more obvious to Society.
reading people understanding
In the novel we can know people perfectly, and, apart from the general pleasure of reading, we can find here a compensation for their dimness in life.
time novelists stories
It is never possible for a novelist to deny time inside the fabric of his novel: he must cling, however lightly, to the thread of his story, he must touch the interminable tapeworm, otherwise he becomes unintelligible, which, in his case, is a blunder.
spiritual heaven promise
Intuition attracts those who wish to be spiritual without any bother, because it promises a heaven where the intuitions of others can be ignored.
mistake humility hypocrisy
Humility is a quality for which I have only a limited admiration. In many phases of life it is a great mistake and degenerates into defensiveness or hypocrisy.
spiritual fall men
All that is observable in a man-that is to say his actions and such of his spiritual existence as can be deduced from his actions-falls into the domain of history.
giving after-death
Give, do not lend; after death who will thank you?
mean humanity desire
But Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.
self-confidence office history
It is pleasant to be transferred from an office where one is afraid of a sergeant-major into an office where one can intimidate generals, and perhaps this is why history is so attractive to the more timid among us. We can recover self-confidence by snubbing the dead.
husband want next
We are all like Scheherazade's husband, in that we want to know what happens next.
life two worried
One has two duties - to be worried and not to be worried.
creativity two perfect
Just as words have two functions - information and creation - so each human mind has two personalities, one on the surface, one deeper down. The upper personality... is conscious and alert... The lower personality is a... perfect fool, but without it there is no literature...