Quote

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.

E. M. Forster

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Experience
Otherwise
Must
Genius
Historians
Men
Move
Historian
World
Personal
Conception
Dead
Behave
Literature
Gain
Moving
Experiences
Use
Gains

More quotes by E. M. Forster

Image
The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken.
E. M. Forster
Image
There is something majestic in the bad taste of Italy.
E. M. Forster
Image
Ulysses ... is a dogged attempt to cover the universe with mud, an inverted Victorianism, an attempt to make crossness and dirt succeed where sweetness and light failed, a simplification of the human character in the interests of Hell.
E. M. Forster
Image
But Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.
E. M. Forster
Image
It was not that ladies were inferior to men it was that they were different. Their mission was to inspire others to achievement rather than to achieve themselves. Indirectly, by means of tact and a spotless name, a lady could accomplish much. But if she rushed into the fray herself she would be first censured, then despised, and finally ignored.
E. M. Forster
Image
English literature is a flying fish.
E. M. Forster
Image
She loved him absolutely, perhaps for half an hour.
E. M. Forster
Image
Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly they are still entangled with the desire for ownership.
E. M. Forster
Image
It is easy to sympathize at a distance,' said an old gentleman with a beard. 'I value more the kind word that is spoken close to my ear.
E. M. Forster
Image
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
Image
Excuse my mistakes, realize my limitations. Life is not easy as we know it on the earth.
E. M. Forster
Image
I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals.
E. M. Forster
Image
As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through exams, so long must we take the examination system seriously. If another ladder to employment was contrived, much so-called education would disappear, and no one be a penny the stupider.
E. M. Forster
Image
There's never any great risk as long as you have money.
E. M. Forster
Image
It is the function of the novelist to reveal the hidden life at its source: to tell us more about Queen Victoria than could be known, and thus to produce a character who is not the Queen Victoria of history.
E. M. Forster
Image
One can run away from women, turn them out, or give in to them. No fourth course.
E. M. Forster
Image
He educated Maurice, or rather his spirit educated Maurice's spirit, for they themselves became equal. Neither thought Am I led am I leading? Love had caught him out of triviality and Maurice out of bewilderment in order that two imperfect souls might touch perfection.
E. M. Forster
Image
It isn't possible to love and to part.
E. M. Forster
Image
It makes a difference doesn't it, whether we fully fence ourselves in, or whether we are fenced out by the barriers of others?
E. M. Forster
Image
Passion does not blind. No. Passion is sanity, and the woman you love, she is the only person you will ever really understand.
E. M. Forster