Quote

It is thus, if there is any rule, that we ought to die--neither as victim nor as fanatic, but as the seafarer who can greet with an equal eye the deep that he is entering, and the shore that he must leave.

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
Leave
Shore
Dies
Victim
Eye
Thus
Must
Rule
Neither
Greet
Deep
Fanatic
Equal
Fanatics
Ought
Entering

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The book [ A Passage to India ] shows signs of fatigue and disillusionment but it has chapters of clear and triumphant beauty, and above all it makes us wonder, what will he write next?
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They cared for no one, they were outside humanity, and death, had it come, would only have continued their pursuit of a retreating horizon.
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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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Surely the only sound foundation for a civilization is a sound state of mind.
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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.
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Pathos, piety, courage, they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value.
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The traveller who has gone to Italy to study the tactile values of Giotto, or the corruption of the Papacy, may return remembering nothing but the blue sky and the men and women who live under it.
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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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If only the sense of actuality can be lulled-and it sleeps for ever in most historians-there is no passion that cannot be gratified in the past.
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