Quotes by E.M. Forster

Travel was a species of warfare.

Naked I came into the world, naked I shall go out of it! And a very good thing too, for it reminds me that I am naked under my shirt, whatever its colour.

... And now we shant be parted no more, and thats finished.

... and someone he scarcely knew moved towards him and knelt beside him and whispered, Sir, was you calling out for me? ... Sir, I know ... I know, and touched him.

... I since cricket match do long to talk with one of my arms around you, then place both arms round you and share with you, the above now seems sweeter to me than words can say.

Gray clouds were charging across tissues of white, which stretched and shredded and tore slowly, until through their final layers there gleamed a hint of the disappearing blue. Summer was retreating. The wind roared, the trees groaned, yet the noise seemed insufficient for those vast operations in heaven. The weather was breaking up, breaking, broken, and it is a sense of the fit rather than of the supernatural that equips such crises with the salvos of angelic artillery.

So never give in,” continued the girl, and restated again and again the vague yet convincing plea that the Invisible lodges against the Visible. Her excitement grew as she tried to cut the rope that fastened Leonard to the earth. Woven of bitter experience, it resisted her. Presently the waitress entered and gave her a letter from Margaret. Another note, addressed to Leonard, was inside. They read them, listening to the murmurings of the river.

Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.

…But so few of us think clearly about our own private incomes, and admit that independent thoughts are in nine cases out of ten the result of independent means.

It is not difficult to stand above the conventions when we leave no hostages among them; men can always be more unconventional than women, and a bachelor of independent means need encounter no difficulties at all.

He lived to near the things he loved to seem poetical.

Theres never any great risk as long as you have money.

I am an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.

It comes to this then: there always have been people like me and always will be, and generally they have been persecuted.

Conse­quently the Wolfenden recommendations will be indefinitely rejected, police prosecutions will continue and Clive on the bench will continue to sentence Alec in the dock. Maurice may get off.

She was as bored as her brother would have been, and had not his gift of listening beneath words.

And Englishmen like posing as gods.

Most of the inhabitants of India do not mind how India is governed. Nor are the lower animals of England concerned about England, but in the tropics the indifference is more prominent, the inarticulate world is closer at hand and readier to resume control as soon as men are tired.

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.

And Aziz in an awful rage danced this way and that, not knowing what to do, and cried: Down with the English anyhow. Thats certain. Clear out, you fellows, double quick, I say. We may hate one another, but we hate you most. If I dont make you go, Ahmed will, Karim will, if its flfty-flve hundred years we shall get rid of you, yes, we shall drive every blasted Englishman into the sea, and then —he rode against him furiously— and then, he concluded, half kissing him, you and I shall be friends.