Quote

The present flowed by them like a stream. The tree rustled. It had made music before they were born, and would continue after their deaths, but its song was of the moment. The moment had passed. The tree rustled again. Their senses were sharpened, and they seemed to apprehend life. Life passed. The tree rustled again.

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
Born
Streams
Song
Passed
Moments
Senses
Rustled
Music
Seemed
Sharpened
Made
Continue
Apprehend
Would
Tree
Flowed
Life
Present
Deaths
Like
Moment
Stream

More quotes by E. M. Forster

Image
It is devilish difficult to criticise society & also create human beings.
E. M. Forster
Image
The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul.
E. M. Forster
Image
Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its highest. Live in fragments no longer
E. M. Forster
Image
The English countryside, its growth and its destruction, is a genuine and tragic theme.
E. M. Forster
Image
There's never any great risk as long as you have money.
E. M. Forster
Image
Are not beauty and delicacy the same?
E. M. Forster
Image
I won't be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult.
E. M. Forster
Image
He had known so much about her once -what she thought, how she felt, the reasons for her actions. And now he only knew that he loved her, and all the other knowledge seemed passing from him just as he needed it most.
E. M. Forster
Image
Hardship is vanishing, but so is style, and the two are more closely connected than the present generation supposes.
E. M. Forster
Image
Some reviews give pain. This is regrettable, but no author has the right to whine. He was not obliged to be an author. He invited publicity, and he must take the publicity that comes along.
E. M. Forster
Image
English literature is a flying fish.
E. M. Forster
Image
It is my fate and perhaps my temperament to sign agreements with fools.
E. M. Forster
Image
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
Image
Human beings have their great chance in the novel.
E. M. Forster
Image
The Germans are called brutal, the Spanish cruel, the Americans superficial, and so on but we are perfide Albion, the island of hypocrites, the people who have built up an Empire with a Bible in one hand, a pistol in the other, and financial concessions in both pockets. Is the charge true? I think it is.
E. M. Forster
Image
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
Image
[...] it is right to be kind and even sacrifice ourselves to people who need kindness and lie in our way - otherwise, besides failing to help them, we run into the aridity of self-development. To seek for recipients of one's goodness, to play the Potted Jesus leads to the contray the Christian danger.
E. M. Forster
Image
Chess is a forcing house where the fruits of character can ripen more fully than in life
E. M. Forster
Image
But I have seen my obstacles: trivialities, learning and poetry. This last needs explaining: the old artist's readiness to dissolve characters into a haze. Characters cannot come alive and fight and guide the world unless the novelist wants them to remain characters.
E. M. Forster
Image
Excuse my mistakes, realize my limitations. Life is not easy as we know it on the earth.
E. M. Forster