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170fa21
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I was yours once 'till death if you'd cared to keep me, but I'm someone else's now - I can't hang about whining forever - and he's mine in a way that shocks you, but why don't you stop being shocked, and attend to your own happiness?
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sassiness
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E.M. Forster |
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cfed5e5
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There is only a certain amount of kindness in the world...just as there is a certain amount of light. We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things...Choose a place where you won't do very much harm and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.
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light
life
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E.M. Forster |
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737fdfa
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It is impossible to foretell the future with any degree of accuracy, that it is impossible to rehearse life. A fault in the scenery, a face in the audience, an interruption of the audience on to the stage, and all our carefully planned gesture mean nothing, or mean too much.
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life
planning
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E.M. Forster |
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be7630b
|
The house was very quiet, and the fog--we are in November now--pressed against the windows like an excluded ghost.
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e-m-forster
howards-end
autumnal
november
fall
autumn
description
quiet
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E.M. Forster |
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5ffb0bd
|
Nothing's the same for anyone. That's why life's this Hell, if you do a thing you're damned, and if you don't you're damned . . . .
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E.M. Forster |
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9314179
|
You mean that a Frenchman could share with a friend and yet not go to prison?' 'Share? Do you mean unite? If both are of age and avoid public indecency, certainly.' 'Will the law ever be that in England?' 'I doubt it. England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.
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E.M. Forster |
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1c6eb71
|
Expansion. That is the idea the novelist must cling to. Not completion. Not rounding off, but opening out.
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writing
opening-up
expansion
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E.M. Forster |
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ada9e9a
|
They had never struggled, and only a struggle twists sentimentality and lust together into love.
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E.M. Forster |
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be53a45
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There's never any great risk as long as you have money.
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risk
|
E.M. Forster |
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c8a7723
|
How can the mind take hold of such a country? Generations of invaders have tried, but they remain in exile. The important towns they build are only retreats, their quarrels the malaise of men who cannot find their way home. India knows of their trouble. She knows of the whole world's trouble, to its uttermost depth. She calls "Come" through her hundred mouths, through objects ridiculous and august. But come to what? She has never defined. S..
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literature
travel
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E.M. Forster |
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adb3200
|
For a wonderful physical tie binds the parents to the children; and--by some sad, strange irony--it does not bind us children to our parents. For if it did, if we could answer their love not with gratitude but with equal love, life would lose much of its pathos and much of its squalor, and we might be wonderfully happy.
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parents
|
E.M. Forster |
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13e92cf
|
Why children?' he asked. 'Why always children? For love to end where it begins is far more beautiful, and Nature knows it.
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nature
love
homosexuality
sterility
parenting
|
E.M. Forster |
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d84a7b4
|
It is obvious enough for the reader to conclude, "She loves young Emerson." A reader in Lucy's place would not find it obvious. Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome "nerves" or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire. She loved Cecil; George made her nervous; will the reader explain to her that the phrases should have been reversed?"
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|
E.M. Forster |
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e3ca6a9
|
He knew that loneliness was poisoning him, so that he grew viler as well as more unhappy.
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|
E.M. Forster |
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14507e3
|
My father says that there is only one perfect view -- the view of the sky straight over our heads, and that all these views on earth are but bungled copies of it.
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the-sky
view
perception
|
E.M. Forster |
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b6cd46c
|
Science explained people, but could not understand them.
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science
|
E.M. Forster |
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058b742
|
People have their own deaths as well as their own lives, and even if there is nothing beyond death, we shall differ in our nothingness.
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|
E.M. Forster |
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2331ffe
|
Aziz winked at him slowly and said: "...There are many ways of being a man; mine is to express what is deepest in my heart."
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|
E.M. Forster |
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207528b
|
Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood.
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long-term-relationships
pride
|
E.M. Forster |
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b5a4115
|
You can when you mean to,' said Maurice gently. 'You can do anything once you know what it is.
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|
E.M. Forster |
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06793d9
|
But the poetry of that kiss, the wonder of it, the magic that there was in life for hours after it--who can describe that? It is so easy for an Englishman to sneer at these chance collisions of human beings. To the insular cynic and the insular moralist they offer an equal opportunity. It is so easy to talk of "passing emotion," and how to forget how vivid the emotion was ere it passed. Our impulse to sneer, to forget, is at root a good one..
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|
E.M. Forster |
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8e3a575
|
He had awoken too late for happiness, but not for strength, and could feel an austere joy, as of a warrior who is homeless but stands fully armed.
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strength
|
E.M. Forster |
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e41b169
|
He had known so much about her once -what she thought, how she felt, the reasons for her actions. And now he only knew that he loved her, and all the other knowledge seemed passing from him just as he needed it most.
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relationships
|
E.M. Forster |
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a29841b
|
She hated war and liked soldiers--it was one of her amiable inconsistencies.
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|
E.M. Forster |
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db22fb8
|
The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected.
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|
E.M. Forster |
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eb3910a
|
And now we shan't be parted no more, and that's finished.
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love
|
E.M. Forster |
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9ed2ecb
|
Does it seem reasonable that she should play so wonderfully, and live so quietly? I suspect that one day she will be wonderful in both. The water-tight compartments in her will break down, and music and life will mingle.
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|
E.M. Forster |
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8a53bb8
|
Do you suppose there's any difference between spring in nature and spring in man? But there we go, praising the one and condemning the other as improper, ashamed that the same laws work eternally through both.
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|
E.M. Forster |
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df0f02e
|
It was unbearable, and he thought again, 'How unhappy I am!' and became happier.
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|
E.M. Forster |
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eae2bc4
|
One can tip too much as well as too little, indeed the coin that buys the exact truth has not yet been minted.
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|
E.M. Forster |
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e8cc1bb
|
We know that we come from the winds, and that we shall return to them; that all life is perhaps a knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness. But why should this make us unhappy? Let us love one another, and work and rejoice. I don't believe in this world sorrow.
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E.M. Forster |
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40cb333
|
Life's very difficult and full of surprises. At all events, I've got as far as that. To be humble and kind, to go straight ahead, to love people rather than pity them, to remember the submerged--well, one can't do all these things at once, worse luck, because they're so contradictory. It's then that proportion comes in--to live by proportion. Don't begin with proportion. Only prigs do that. Let proportion come in as a last resource, when th..
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E.M. Forster |
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8745365
|
When love flies it is remembered not as love but as something else. Blessed are the uneducated, who forget it entirely, and are never conscious of folly or pruriency in the past, of long aimless conversations.
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E.M. Forster |
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ff34425
|
I only wish the poets would say this too: love is of the body; not the body, but of the the body. Ah! the misery that would be saved if we confessed that! Ah! for a little directness to liberate the soul!
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|
E.M. Forster |
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c674aa6
|
You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you.
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|
E.M. Forster |
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23c1035
|
And the goblins--they had not really been there at all? They were only the phantoms of cowardice and unbelief? One healthy human impulse would dispel them? Men like the Wilcoxes, or ex-President Roosevelt, would say yes. Beethoven knew better. The goblins really had been there. They might return--and they did. It was as if the splendour of life might boil over and waste to steam and froth. In its dissolution one heard the terrible, ominous ..
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goblins
|
E.M. Forster |
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d92edb4
|
for literature had always been a solace for him, something that the ugliness of facts could not spoil.
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|
E.M. Forster |
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f0d1ae6
|
At times he entertained the dream. Two men can defy the world.
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maurice-novel
|
E.M. Forster |
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396ab2c
|
One minute. You know nothing about him. He probably has his own joys and interests- wife, children, snug little home. That's where we practical fellows'- he smiled-'are more tolerant than you intellectuals. We live and let live, and assume that things are jogging on fairly well elsewhere, and that the ordinary plain man may be trusted to look after his own affairs.
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live
ordinary
nothing
|
E.M. Forster |
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2f7a52c
|
As her time in Florence drew to a close she was only at ease amongst those to whom she felt indifferent.
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|
E.M. Forster |
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129e900
|
Man can learn everything if he will but try.
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|
E.M. Forster |
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73d1dbc
|
The bully and the victim never quite forget their first relations.
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|
E.M. Forster |
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b27574e
|
God has put us on earth to love our neighbors and to show it, and He is omnipresent, even in India, to see how we are succeeding.
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|
E.M. Forster |
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08e2bc7
|
Some leave our life with tears, others with an insane frigidity; Mrs. Wilcox had taken the middle course, which only rarer natures can pursue. She had kept proportion. She had told a little of her grim secret to her friends, but not too much; she had shut up her heart--almost, but not entirely. It is thus, if there is any rule, that we ought to die--neither as victim nor as fanatic, but as the seafarer who can greet with an equal eye the de..
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life
|
E.M. Forster |