M. Forster
M. Forster
imagination wells
It is the starved imagination, not the well nourished, that is afraid.
paganism piety
Paganism is infectious, more infectious than diphtheria or piety.
house earth ifs
If there is on earth a house with many mansions, it is the house of words.
people individual mystic
I have no mystic faith in the people. I have in the individual.
dog flower gun
A sentence begins quite simply, then it undulates and expands, parentheses intervene like quick-set hedges, the flowers of comparison bloom, and three fields off, like a wounded partridge, crouches the principal verb, making one wonder as one picks it up, poor little thing, whether after all it was worth such a tramp, so many guns, and such expensive dogs, and what, after all, is its relation to the main subject, potted so gaily half a page back, and proving finally to have been in the accusative case.
liberty care heritage
The hungry and the homeless don't care about liberty any more than they care about cultural heritage. To pretend that they do care is cant.
sleep passion past
If only the sense of actuality can be lulled-and it sleeps for ever in most historians-there is no passion that cannot be gratified in the past.
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.