Quotes by E. M. Forster

“I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people Id like to be.”

“You can transmute love, muddle it, ignore it... but you can never pull it out of you...”

“Away she hurried, not beautiful, not supremely brilliant, but filled with something that took the place of both qualities -- something best described as a profound vivacity, a continual and sincere response to all that she encountered in her path through life.”

“I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.”

“They go forth with well-developed bodies, fairly developed minds and undeveloped hearts. An undeveloped heart-not a cold one. The difference is important.”

“At the side of the everlasting why, is a yes, and a yes, and a yes”

“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.”

“Unless we remember we cannot understand”

“The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.”

“The first time I read an excellent work, it is to me just as if I gained a new friend; and when I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting of an old one”

“To love to read is to exchange hours of ennui for hours of delight.”

“Nonsense and beauty have close connections.”

“Beauty is power; a smile is its sword.”

“There is much good luck in the world, but it is luck. We are none of us safe. We are children, playing or quarrelling on the line.”

“Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice...”

“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 deep that he is entering, and the shore that he must leave.”

“How can I know what I think till I see what I say?”

“The final test for a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define.”

“I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have gone ourselves.”

“America is rather like life. You can usually find in it what you look for. It will probably be interesting, and it is sure to be large.”