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

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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
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

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Democracy is not a Beloved Republic really, and never will be. But it is less hateful than other contemporary forms of government, and to that extent deserves our support.
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I don't know what to think until I see what I've said.
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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.
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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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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.
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For you cannot have gentility without paying for it.
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A mirror does not develop because an historical pageant passes in front of it. It only develops when it gets a fresh coat of quicksilver in other words, when it acquires new sensitiveness and the novel's success lies in its own sensitiveness, not in the success of its subject matter.
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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.
E. M. Forster
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It isn't possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.
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It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror--on thethings that I might have avoided.
E. M. Forster
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. . . life is sometimes life and sometimes only a drama, and one must learn to distinguish t'other from which . . .
E. M. Forster
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There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer.
E. M. Forster
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Let us think of people as starting life with an experience they forget and ending it with one which they anticipate but cannot understand.
E. M. Forster
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Lord I disbelieve - help thou my unbelief.
E. M. Forster
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When we were only acquaintances, you let me be myself, but now you're always protecting me... I won't be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult. Can't I be trusted to face the truth but I must get it second-hand through you? A woman's place!
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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.
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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.
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Ah, but you see, I didn't want to be fair.
E. M. Forster
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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.
E. M. Forster
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Happiness in the ordinary sense is not what one needs in life, though one is right to aim at it. The true satisfaction is to come through, and see those whom one lives come through.
E. M. Forster