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29078ae
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He built up a situation that was far enough from the truth. It never occurred to him that Helen was to blame. He forgot the intensity of their talk, the charm that had been lent him by sincerity, the magic of Oniton under darkness and of the whispering river. Helen loved the absolute. Leonard had been ruined absolutely, and had appeared to her as a man apart, isolated from the world. A real man, who cared for adventure and beauty, who desir..
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ruination
river
intensity
water
misunderstanding
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E.M. Forster |
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4b65e8d
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People turned out to be alive. Hitherto he had supposed that they were what he pretended to be - flat pieces of cardboard stamped with a conventional design... there came by no process of reason a conviction that they were human beings with feelings akin to his own.
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social-commentary
society
self
sociology
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E.M. Forster |
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24da240
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It never bored them to hear words, words; they breathed them with the cool night air, never stopping to analyse; the name of the poet, Hafiz, Hali, Iqbal, was sufficient guarantee. India--a hundred Indias--whispered outside beneath the indifferent moon, but for the time India seemed one and their own, and they regained their departed greatness by hearing its departure lamented, they felt young again because reminded that youth must fly.
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poetry
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E.M. Forster |
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38c2f62
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Man has to pick up the use of his functions as he goes along- especially the function of Love.
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E.M. Forster |
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8b37659
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The issues Miss Quested had raised were so much more important than she was herself that people inevitably forgot her.
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issues
public-opinion
relevance
memory
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E.M. Forster |
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5da70ec
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But Italy worked some marvel in her. It gave her light, and - which he held more precious - it gave her shadow. Soon he detected in her a wonderful reticence. She was like a woman of Leonardo da Vinci's, whom we love not so much for herself as for the things that she will not tell us. The things are assuredly not of this life; no woman of Leonardo's could have anything so vulgar as a "story." She did develop most wonderfully day by day."
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E.M. Forster |
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2f4e27d
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What does unhappiness matter when we are all unhappy together?
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E.M. Forster |
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ef2657a
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He had brought out the man in Alec, and now it was Alec's turn to bring out the hero in him
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E.M. Forster |
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808fb07
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But it was the stupidity of passion, which would rather have nothing than a little.
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E.M. Forster |
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436d814
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He stretched out his hands as he sang, sadly, because all beauty is sad...The poem had done no 'good' to anyone, but it was a passing reminder, a breath from the divine lips of beauty, a nightingale between two worlds of dust. Less explicit than the call to Krishna, it voiced our loneliness nevertheless, our isolation, our need for the Friend who never comes yet is not entirely disproved.
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E.M. Forster |
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61ec7d0
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Conversation was tedious; she wanted something big, and she believed that it would have come to her on the windswept platform of an electric tram.
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E.M. Forster |
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073015a
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Happy Charlotte, who, though greatly troubled over things that did not matter, seemed oblivious to things that did...
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E.M. Forster |
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9cf7a83
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Human beings have their great chance in the novel.
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meaning
meaning-of-life
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E.M. Forster |
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ec47c18
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Most of us are pseudo-scholars...for we are a very large and quite a powerful class, eminent in Church and State, we control the education of the Empire, we lend to the Press such distinction as it consents to receive, and we are a welcome asset at dinner-parties. Pseudo-scholarship is, on its good side, the homage paid by ignorance to learning. It also has an economic side, on which we need not be hard. Most of us must get a job before thi..
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writing
market
employment
falsehood
jobs
scholarship
college
economics
faculty
exams
university
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E.M. Forster |
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d2675f1
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Of the many things Lucy was noticing today, not the least remarkable was this: this ghoulish fashion in which respectable people will nibble after blood.
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E.M. Forster |
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abccbe7
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But it is sometimes as difficult to lose one's temper as it is difficult at other times to keep it.
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E.M. Forster |
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a11b506
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Discussion keeps a house alive. It cannot stand by bricks and mortar alone.
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E.M. Forster |
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03c96fd
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We are reverting to the civilization of luggage, and historians of the future will note how the middle classes accreted possessions without taking root in the earth, and may find in this the secret of their imaginative poverty.
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E.M. Forster |
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b92df17
|
They sowed the duller vegetables first, and a pleasant feeling of righteous fatigue stole over them as they addressed themselves to the peas.
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peas
vegetables
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E.M. Forster |
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0c87491
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He had shown her all the workings of his soul, mistaking this for love.
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intimacy-self-sacrifice
transparency
therapy
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E.M. Forster |
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f91bf07
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There had always been something to worry him ever since he could remember, always something that distracted him in the pursuit of beauty. For he did pursue beauty, and, therefore, Margaret's speeches did flutter away from him like birds.
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E.M. Forster |
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1170823
|
And of course she had studied the civilization that had immediately preceded her own - the civilization that had mistaken the functions of the system, and had used it for bringing people to things, instead of for bringing things to people. Those funny old days, when men went for change of air instead of changing the air in their rooms!
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dystopia
|
E.M. Forster |
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75faba5
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A rebel she was, but not of the kind he understood--a rebel who desired, not a wider dwelling-room, but equality beside the man she loved.
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lucy-honeychurch
rebel
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E.M. Forster |
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e652d05
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It's better to be fooled than to be suspicious - that the confidence trick is the work of man, but the want-of-confidence trick is the work of the devil.
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E.M. Forster |
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0071e9a
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He was not sure, but liked it. It recurred when they met suddenly or had been silent. It beckoned to him across intellect, saying, "This is all very well, you're clever, we know--but come!" It haunted him so that he watched for it while his brain and tongue were busy, and when it came he felt himself replying, "I'll come--I didn't know." "You can't help yourself now. You must come." "I don't want to help myself." "Come then." He did come. H..
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lovers
love
maurice
forster
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E.M. Forster |
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7a87b0d
|
Sensuality, as long as it is straightforward did not repel him, but this derived sensuality - the sort that classes a mistress among motor-cars if she is beautiful, and among eye-flies if she isn't - was alien to his own emotions . . . It was, in a new form, the old, old trouble that eats the heart out of every civilization: snobbery, the desire for possessions, creditable appendages; and it is to escape this rather than the lusts of the fl..
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E.M. Forster |
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4811412
|
I'm afraid that in nine cases out of ten Nature pulls one way and human nature another.
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nature
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E.M. Forster |
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b763b94
|
Mature as he was, she might yet be able to help him to the building of the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion. Without it we are meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man.
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E.M. Forster |
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98a8560
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In his ordinary voice, so that she scarcely realized he was quoting poetry, he said: "'From far, from eve and morning, And yon twelve-winded sky, The stuff of life to knit me Blew hither: here am I' George and I both know this, but why does it distress him? 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..
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E.M. Forster |
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d95e02b
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Every little trifle, for some reason, does seem incalculably important today, and when you say of a thing that 'nothing hangs on it,' it sounds like blasphemy. There's never any knowing--(how am I to put it?)--which of our actions, which of our idlenesses won't have things hanging on it for ever.
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idleness
consequences
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E.M. Forster |
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37b42ef
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Oh, what's the use of your fairmindedness if you never decide for yourself? Anyone gets hold of you and makes you do what they want. And you see through them and laugh at them - and do it. It's not enough to see clearly; I'm muddle-headed and stupid, and not worth a quarter of you, but I have tried to do what seemed right at the time. And you - your brain and your insight are splendid. But when you see what's right you're too idle to do it...
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E.M. Forster |
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f9fe7db
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Fed by neither Heaven nor by Earth he was going forward . . . He hadn't a God or a lover--the two usual incentives to virtue. But on he struggled with his back to ease, because dignity demanded it. There was no one to watch him, nor did he watch himself, but struggles like his are the supreme achievements of humanity, and surpass any legends about Heavan.
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self-respect
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E.M. Forster |
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c046442
|
The stories of Harmonius and Aristogeiton, of Phaedrus of the Theban Band were well enough for those whose hearts were empty, but no substitute for life. That Clive should occasionally prefer them puzzled him.
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E.M. Forster |
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107f80e
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Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element - direct observation. Do not learn anything about this subject of mine - the French Revolution. Learn instead what I think that Enicharmon thought Urizen thought Gutch thought Ho-Yung thought Chi-Bo-Sing thought Lafcadio Hearn thought Carlyle thought Mirabeau said about the French Revolution.
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E.M. Forster |
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a33661e
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I don't know. I've come to tell you what I did.' Yes, that was the reason of his visit. It was the closing of a book that would never be read again, and better close such a book than leave it lying about to get dirtied. The volume of their past must be restored to its shelf, and here, here was the place, amid darkness and perishing flowers. He owed it to Alec also. He could suffer no mixing of the old with the new. All compromise was perilo..
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|
E.M. Forster |
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ed9ec0c
|
Love and Truth, their warfare seems eternal.
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|
E.M. Forster |
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3db3f01
|
He had said it bravely, and that is why one can trust Beethoven when he says other things.
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|
E.M. Forster |
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89fa7ac
|
We residents sometimes pity you poor tourists not a little - handed about like a parcel of goods from Venice to Florence, from Florence to Rome, living herded together in pensions or hotels, quite unconscious of anything that is outside Baedeker, their one anxiety to get 'done' and 'through' and go somewhere else. The result is they mix up towns, rivers, palaces in one inextricable whirl.
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|
E.M. Forster |
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f58b93f
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How indeed is it possible for one human being to be sorry for all the sadness that meets him on the face of the earth, for the pain that is endured not only by men, but by animals and plants, and perhaps by the stones?
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|
E.M. Forster |
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97a5f5f
|
He never even thought of tenderness and emotion; his considerations about Durham remained cold. Durham didn't dislike him, he was sure. That was all he wanted. One thing at a time. He didn't so much as have hopes, for hope distracts, and he had a great deal to see to.
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hope
love
gay-romance
patience
|
E.M. Forster |
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3993d5b
|
Maurice was scandalized, horrified. He was shocked to the bottom of his suburban soul....
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suburban-life
suburbiaia
shock
|
E.M. Forster |
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3ab87bc
|
Rudeness affected Margaret like a bitter taste in the mouth. It poisoned life. At times it is necessary, but woe to those who employ it without due need.
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life
unpleasant
howards-end
rude
manners
rudeness
|
E.M. Forster |
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3129b9b
|
I rather mistrust young men who slip into life gracefully.
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mentoring
maturation
|
E.M. Forster |
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53e6280
|
Vashti was seized with the terrors of direct experience. She shrank back into the room, and the wall closed up again.
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machine
science-fiction
isolation
|
E.M. Forster |