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
Nonsense and beauty have close connections.
England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.
Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate.
Of course he despised the world as a whole; every thoughtful man should; it is almost a test of refinement.
I cannot help thinking that there is something to admire in everyone, even if you do not approve of them.
The emotions may be endless. The more we express them, the more we may have to express.
They cared for no one, they were outside humanity, and death, had it come, would only have continued their pursuit of a retreating horizon.
Adventures do occur, but not punctually.
It isn't possible to love and to part.
Romance only dies with life. No pair of pincers will ever pull it out of us. But there is a spurious sentiment which cannot resist the unexpected and the incongruous and the grotesque. A touch will loosen it, and the sooner it goes from us the better.
It is easy to sympathize at a distance,' said an old gentleman with a beard. 'I value more the kind word that is spoken close to my ear.
Reverence is fatal to literature.
She must be assured that it is not a criminal offense to love at first sight.
The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected. The commonplace person begins to play, and shoots into the empyrean without effort, whilst we look up, marvelling how he has escaped us, and thinking how we could worship him and love him, would he but translate his visions into human words, and his experiences into human actions. Perhaps he cannot; certainly he does not, or does so very seldom.