When we dive into the realm of literary arts, few names resonate as powerfully as Edward Morgan Forster, or as he's more commonly known, E.M. Forster. An author who has gifted the world with timeless classics such as “A Room with a View”, “Howard's End“, and “A Passage to India“, Forster's body of work is a treasure trove of profound thoughts and brilliant musings. As you may have guessed, you've landed on a gold mine of “Classic E.M. Forster Quotes” that have the power to inspire, provoke thought, and kindle a newfound appreciation for this legendary author.
Many may not know this intriguing bit of trivia about Forster: though his novels are teeming with conversation, he was, in fact, a man of few words in real life. However, these were always thoughtfully chosen, much like the “E.M. Forster Quotes” we're about to explore. Whether he was penning tales of romance, class conflict, or colonialism, Forster always managed to thread in quotes that encapsulated grand truths of human nature. So, buckle up, and prepare to embark on a journey through 50 carefully curated, classic quotes from Forster, each one a glowing testament to his literary genius. You're about to immerse yourself in the rich world of Forster's wit and wisdom, with every quote offering a fresh perspective on life, love, and everything in between.
Life and Love
1. “Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.” – A Room with a View
2. “One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.” – Room With A View
3. “It isn't possible to love and part. You will wish that it was.” – A Room with a View
4. “Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things.” – Howard's End
5. “We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet.” – Howards End
6. “Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him.” – Howards End
7. “The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love, and death.” – A Room with a View
8. “Life is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.” – Room with a View
9. “I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves.” – A Room with a View
10. “Tolerance is just a makeshift, suitable for an overcrowded and overheated planet.” – A Passage to India
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Society and Class
- “The four pillars of wisdom that support life are as a rule so rickety that they can easily be knocked away.” – A Passage to India
- “To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.” – A Passage to India
- “Beauty ought to look a little surprised: it is the emotion that best suits her face.” – A Room with a View
- “But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to merge into something else.” – A Passage to India
- “Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted…” – Howards End
- “No one is India, and the whole of India is in no one.” – A Passage to India
- “Adventure's not in roaming, adventure's not in coming, adventure's not in seeking, it's in being.” – The Longest Journey
- “The more highly public life is organized the lower does its morality sink.” – A Room with a View
- “A happy ending was imperative… I shouldn't have bothered to write otherwise.” – A Room with a View
- “The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.” – Two Cheers for Democracy
Conflict and Resolution
- “Human relations are profoundly mathematical… Our daily life is balanced between these forces in proportions we determine.” – Howards End
- “When I think of what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love—Marry him; it is one of the moments for which the world was made.” – A Room with a View
- “Most quarrels are inevitable at the time; incredible afterwards.” – A Room with a View
- “Paganism is infectious, more infectious than diphtheria or piety.” – Where Angels Fear to Tread
- “I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and Ialways feel a little man's pleasure when they come a cropper.” – Two Cheers for Democracy
- “One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.” – A Room with a View
- “A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union.” – Howards End
- “The final test of a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, of anything else that we cannot define.” – Aspects of the Novel
- “There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer.” – A Passage to India
- “I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.” – Two Cheers for Democracy
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Discovery and Understanding
- “To make a discovery is not necessarily the same as to understand a discovery.” – A Passage to India
- “Failure or success seem to have been allotted to men by their stars. But they retain the power of wriggling, of fighting with their star or against it, and in the whole universe the only really interesting movement is this wriggle.” – A Room with a View
- “Every little trifle for some reason does seem incalculably important today and when you say of a thing that ‘nothing hangs on it’ it sounds like blasphemy.” – A Room with a View
- “Mature as he was, she might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion.” – Howards End
- “What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.” – Two Cheers for Democracy
- “Art for art's sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orderly product which our middling race has produced.” – A Room with a View
- “What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?” – Howards End
- “We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand.” – A Room with a View
- “I distrust the rash optimism in this time of accelerated decay.” – Two Cheers for Democracy
- “The real test is not whether we will make mistakes – that's a given – it is how we correct them and how we learn from them.” – Howards End
Embracing the World
- “I believe in aristocracy… Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky.” – Two Cheers for Democracy
- “I'm the sort of person who embarks on an endless leapfrog down the great moral issues. I put a position, rebut it, refute the rebuttal, and rebut the refutation.” – Two Cheers for Democracy
- “One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.” – A Room with a View
- “Nonsense and beauty have close connections.” – Howards End
- “The more one talks, the less the words mean.” – A Room with a View
- “It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness…” – Howards End
- “The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready,and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves.” – A Room with a View
- “Unaware of the absurdity of it, we introduce our own petty household rules into the economy of the universe for which the life of generations, peoples, of entire planets, has no importance in relation to the general development.” – A Passage to India
- “What's the good of a great city having temptations if fellows don't yield to them?” – Maurice
- “The soul selects her own society.” – Howards End
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