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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

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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
Look
Position
Reminds
Little
Beauty
Surprised
Looks
Face
Dues
Much
Faces
Suits
Funny
Accepting
Doe
Humor
Prima
Littles
Emotion
Donna
Best
Ought
Accepts

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Self-pity? I see no moral objections to it, the smell drives people away, but that's a practical objection, and occasionally an advantage.
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Lord I disbelieve - help thou my unbelief.
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He was obliged however to throw over Christianity. Those who base their conduct upon what they are rather than upon what they ought to be, always must throw it over in the end . . . .
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Love felt and returned, love which our bodies exact and our hearts have transfigured, love which is the most real thing that we shall ever meet, reappeared now as the world's enemy, and she must stifle it.
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The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.
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Romance only dies with life. No pair of pincers will ever pull it out of us. But there is a spurious sentiment which cannot resist the unexpected and the incongruous and the grotesque. A touch will loosen it, and the sooner it goes from us the better.
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There are moments when the inner life actually 'pays,' when years of self-scrutiny, conducted for no ulterior motive, are suddenly of practical use.
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What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?
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Money pads the edges of things.
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All men are equal — all men, that is to say, who possess umbrellas.
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Words deserted him immediately. He could only speak when he was not asked to.
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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.
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At times our need for a sympathetic gesture is so great that we care not what exactly it signifies or how much we may have to pay for it afterwards.
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The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say yesterday I was happy, today I am not.
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I'd far rather leave a thought behind me than a child. Other people can have children.
E. M. Forster
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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 genius.
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There's never any great risk as long as you have money.
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Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate.
E. M. Forster
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What the world most needs today are negative virtues - not minding people, not being huffy, touchy, irritable or revengeful.
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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