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Surely the only sound foundation for a civilization is a sound state of mind.
E. M. Forster
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E. M. Forster
Age: 91 †
Born: 1879
Born: January 1
Died: 1970
Died: June 7
Biographer
Essayist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
London
England
Edward Morgan Forster
E Forster
EM Forster
States
Mind
Surely
Foundation
Civilization
Literature
State
Sound
More quotes by E. M. Forster
I have said that each aspect of the novel demands a different quality of the reader. Well, the prophetic aspect demands two qualities: humility and the suspension of the sense of humour.
E. M. Forster
Words deserted him immediately. He could only speak when he was not asked to.
E. M. Forster
She stopped and leant her elbows against the parapet of the embankment. He did likewise. There is at times a magic in identity of position it is one of the things that have suggested to us eternal comradeship.
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
Life - No, I've nothing to teach you about it for the moment. May be writing about it another week.
E. M. Forster
I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals.
E. M. Forster
All invitations must proceed from heaven perhaps perhaps it is futile for men to initiate their own unity, they do but widen the gulfs between them by the attempt.
E. M. Forster
Of course he despised the world as a whole every thoughtful man should it is almost a test of refinement.
E. M. Forster
...the true spirit of gastronomic joylessness. Porridge fills the Englishman up, and prunes clear him out.
E. M. Forster
Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish!
E. M. Forster
God is not Love in the East. He is Power, although Mercy may temper it.
E. M. Forster
Culture had worked in her own case, but during the last few weeks she had doubted whether it humanized the majority, so wide and so widening is the gulf that stretches between the natural and the philosophic man, so many the good chaps who are wrecked in trying to cross it.
E. M. Forster
If Miss Honeychurch ever takes to live as she plays, it will be very exciting--both for us and for her.
E. M. Forster
Without form, the sensitiveness vanishes.
E. M. Forster
The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected.
E. M. Forster
Curiosity is one of the lowest of the human faculties. You will have noticed in daily life that when people are inquisitive they nearly always have bad memories and are usually stupid at bottom.
E. M. Forster
I only wish the poets would say this too: love is of the body not the body, but of the the body. Ah! the misery that would be saved if we confessed that! Ah! for a little directness to liberate the soul!
E. M. Forster
Reverence is fatal to literature.
E. M. Forster
The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal. Both assumptions are false: both of them must be accepted as true if we are to go on eating and working and loving, and are to keep open a few breathing holes for the human spirit.
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
