E.M. Forster Quotes - Page 3

we may say that History develops, Art stands still

Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wishes to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time.

Have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet at the same time - beautiful?

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.

There stood a young man who had the figure of a Greek athlete and the face of an English one...Just where he began to be beautiful the clothes started.

My father says that there is only one perfect view - the view of the sky straight over our heads, and that all these views on earth are but bungled copies of it.

Why children?' he asked. 'Why always children? For love to end where it begins is far more beautiful, and Nature knows it.

I'm afraid that in nine cases out of ten Nature pulls one way and human nature another.

Night and day, wind and storm, tide and earthquake, impeded man no longer. He had harnessed Leviathan. All the old literature, with its praise of Nature, and its fear of Nature, rang false as the prattle of a child.

While her lips talked culture, her heart was planning to invite him to tea

Perhaps anything that he did would have pleased Lucy, but his awkwardness went straight to her heart.

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.

To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art.

In every remark he found a meaning, but not always the true meaning, and his life, though vivid, was largely a dream.

An acquaintance had become a lover, might become a husband, but would retain all that she had noted in the acquaintance; and love must confirm an old relation rather than reveal a new one.

What indeed is there to say? To be or not to be married, that was the question, and they had decided it in the affirmative.

The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept
those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected.

He had a theory that musicians are incredibly complex, and know far less than other artists what they want and what they are; that they puzzle themselves as well as their friends; that their psychology is a modern development, and has not yet been understood.

Like every true performer, she was intoxicated by the mere feel of the notes: they were fingers caressing her own; and by touch, not by sound alone, did she come to her desire.

They travelled for thirteen hours down-hill, whilst the streams broadened and the mountains shrank, and the vegetation changed, and the people ceased being ugly and drinking beer, and began instead to drink wine and to be beautiful.