Quotes by E. M. Forster

About E. M. Forster:

Edward Morgan Forster is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society. Forster's humanistic impulse toward understanding and sympathy may be aptly summed up in the epigraph to his 1910 novel Howards End: "Only connect ... ". His 1908 novel, A Room with a View, is his most optimistic work, while A Passage to India (1924) brought him his greatest success. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature 13 different years.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

E. M. Forster

To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.

E. M. Forster

The sadness of the incomplete, the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art.

E. M. Forster

The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists.

E. M. Forster

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.

E. M. Forster

History develops, art stands still.

E. M. Forster

Unless we remember we cannot understand.

E. M. Forster

What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.

E. M. Forster

If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.

E. M. Forster

I am so used to seeing the sort of play which deals with one man and two women. They do not leave me with the feeling I have made a full theatrical meal they do not give me the experience of the multiplicity of life.

E. M. Forster

The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead. He can only gain that conception through personal experience, and he can only use his personal experiences when he is a g...

E. M. Forster

We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.

E. M. Forster

Only people who have been allowed to practise freedom can have the grown-up look in their eyes.

E. M. Forster

Nonsense and beauty have close connections.

E. M. Forster

Beauty ought to look a little surprised: it is the emotion that best suits her face. The beauty who does not look surprised, who accepts her position as her due - she reminds us too much of a prima donna.

E. M. Forster

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

E. M. Forster

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

E. M. Forster

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

E. M. Forster

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.

E. M. Forster

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.

E. M. Forster

Author Bio

  • NameE. M. Forster
  • DescriptionEnglish novelist
  • AliasesEdward Morgan Forster
  • BornJanuary 1, 1879
  • DiedJune 7, 1970
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist
  • AwardsJames Tait Black Memorial Prize; Prometheus Award - Hall Of Fame