M. Forster
M. Forster
spiritual fall men
All that is observable in a man-that is to say his actions and such of his spiritual existence as can be deduced from his actions-falls into the domain of history.
giving after-death
Give, do not lend; after death who will thank you?
mean humanity desire
But Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.
self-confidence office history
It is pleasant to be transferred from an office where one is afraid of a sergeant-major into an office where one can intimidate generals, and perhaps this is why history is so attractive to the more timid among us. We can recover self-confidence by snubbing the dead.
husband want next
We are all like Scheherazade's husband, in that we want to know what happens next.
life two worried
One has two duties - to be worried and not to be worried.
creativity two perfect
Just as words have two functions - information and creation - so each human mind has two personalities, one on the surface, one deeper down. The upper personality... is conscious and alert... The lower personality is a... perfect fool, but without it there is no literature...
writing mountain literature
The novel is a formidable mass, and it is so amorphous - no mountain in it to climb, no Parnassus or Helicon, not even a Pisgah. It is most distinctly one of the moister areas of literature - irrigated by a hundred rills and occasionally degenerating into a swamp. I do not wonder that the poets despise it, though they sometimes find themselves in it by accident. And I am not surprised at the annoyance of the historians when by accident it finds itself among them.
london feels
Italy and London are the only places where I don't feel to exist on sufferance.
letting-go angel flames
She had been so wicked that in all her life she had done only one good deed-given an onion to a beggar. So she went to hell. As she lay in torment she saw the onion, lowered down from heaven by an angel. She caught hold of it. He began to pull her up. The other damned saw what was happening and caught hold of it too. She was indignant and cried, "Let go-it's my onion," and as soon as she said, "my onion," the stalk broke and she fell back into the flames.
artist creative criticism
A critic has no right to the narrowness which is the frequent prerogative of the creative artist.
fiction novelists sometimes
A novel is based on evidence, + or -x, the unknown quantity being the temperament of the novelist, and the unknown quantity always modifies the effect of the evidence, and sometimes transforms it entirely.
queens character fiction
It is the function of the novelist to reveal the hidden life at its source: to tell us more about Queen Victoria than could be known, and thus to produce a character who is not the Queen Victoria of history.
moving home giving
Tolerance is just a makeshift, suitable for an overcrowded and overheated planet. It carries on when love gives out, and love generally gives out as soon as we move away from our home and our friends.