E. M. Forster Quotes

The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.

Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.

Charm, in most men and nearly all women, is a decoration.

Love is always being given where it is not required.

England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.

Most quarrels are inevitable at the time; incredible afterwards.

I'm a holy man minus the holiness.

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

Liking one person is an extra reason for liking another.

Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.

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

I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man's pleasure when they come a cropper.

I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.

I have no mystic faith in the people. I have in the individual.

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 I'd like to be.

I never could get on with representative individuals but people who existed on their own account and with whom it might therefore be possible to be friends.

Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch.

For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better.

History develops, art stands still.

Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.

Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.

A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.

At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.

At the side of the everlasting why, is a yes, and a yes, and a yes.

Be soft, even if you stand to get squashed.