E. M. Forster Quotes

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E. M. Forster

Profession : Novelist

Birth : January 1, 1879

Those who prepared for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy.

E. M. Forster

Ideas are fatal to caste.

E. M. Forster

Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return.

E. M. Forster

Two cheers for Democracy; one because it admits variety, and two because it permits criticism.

E. M. Forster

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

E. M. Forster

Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think, creation's.

E. M. Forster

The fact is we can only love what we know personally. And we cannot know much. In public affairs, in the rebuilding of civilization, something less dramatic and emotional is needed, namely tolerance.

E. M. Forster

Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch.

E. M. Forster

Tolerance is a very dull virtue. It is boring. Unlike love, it has always had a bad press. It is negative. It merely means putting up with people, being able to stand things.

E. M. Forster

I'm a holy man minus the holiness.

E. M. Forster

Be soft, even if you stand to get squashed.

E. M. Forster

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.

E. M. Forster

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.

E. M. Forster

What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.

E. M. Forster

So, two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism.

E. M. Forster

Most quarrels are inevitable at the time; incredible afterwards.

E. M. Forster

Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.

E. M. Forster

The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.

E. M. Forster

I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man's pleasure when they come a cropper.

E. M. Forster

Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvellous than the land.

E. M. Forster