E. M. Forster Quotes

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E. M. Forster

Profession : Novelist

Birth : January 1, 1879

Liking one person is an extra reason for liking another.

E. M. Forster

Letters have to pass two tests before they can be classed as good: they must express the personality both of the writer and of the recipient.

E. M. Forster

Only a struggle twists sentimentality and lust together into love.

E. M. Forster

But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to merge in something else.

E. M. Forster

If there is on earth a house with many mansions, it is the house of words.

E. M. Forster

One is certain of nothing but the truth of one's own emotions.

E. M. Forster

There is much good luck in the world, but it is luck. We are none of us safe. We are children, playing or quarrelling on the line.

E. M. Forster

We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.

E. M. Forster

Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.

E. M. Forster

America is rather like life. You can usually find in it what you look for. It will probably be interesting, and it is sure to be large.

E. M. Forster

Beauty ought to look a little surprised: it is the emotion that best suits her face. The beauty who does not look surprised, who accepts her position as her due - she reminds us too much of a prima donna.

E. M. Forster

The woman who can't influence her husband to vote the way she wants ought to be ashamed of herself.

E. M. Forster

There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer.

E. M. Forster

It is my fate and perhaps my temperament to sign agreements with fools.

E. M. Forster

The English countryside, its growth and its destruction, is a genuine and tragic theme.

E. M. Forster

England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.

E. M. Forster

I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I'd like to be.

E. M. Forster