Quote

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

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
Successful
Mountains
Men
Taken
Preparation
Show
Mountain
Success
Prepared
Shows
Waste
Career
Unprepared
Might
Careers
Unsuccessful
Must
Strength
Removed
Never

More quotes by E. M. Forster

Image
A novel must give a sense of permanence as well as a sense of life.
E. M. Forster
Image
For you cannot have gentility without paying for it.
E. M. Forster
Image
Paganism is infectious, more infectious than diphtheria or piety.
E. M. Forster
Image
My law-givers are Erasmus and Montaigne, not Moses and St Paul.
E. M. Forster
Image
Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.
E. M. Forster
Image
Solidity, caution, integrity, efficiency. Lack of imagination, hypocrisy. These qualities characterize the middle classes in everycountry, but in England they are national characteristics.
E. M. Forster
Image
I believe we shall come to care about people less and less, Helen. The more people one knows, the easier it becomes to replace them. It's one of the curses of London. I quite expect to end my life caring most for a place.
E. M. Forster
Image
Words deserted him immediately. He could only speak when he was not asked to.
E. M. Forster
Image
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.
E. M. Forster
Image
We are all like Scheherazade's husband, in that we want to know what happens next.
E. M. Forster
Image
Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.
E. M. Forster
Image
Tolerance is just a makeshift, suitable for an overcrowded and overheated planet. It carries on when love gives out, and love generally gives out as soon as we move away from our home and our friends.
E. M. Forster
Image
How few writers can prostitute all their powers!
E. M. Forster
Image
What the world most needs today are negative virtues - not minding people, not being huffy, touchy, irritable or revengeful.
E. M. Forster
Image
Without form, the sensitiveness vanishes.
E. M. Forster
Image
The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists.
E. M. Forster
Image
She loved him absolutely, perhaps for half an hour.
E. M. Forster
Image
Don't believe those lies about intellectual people. They're only written to soothe the majority.
E. M. Forster
Image
While her lips talked culture, her heart was planning to invite him to tea
E. M. Forster
Image
Are not beauty and delicacy the same?
E. M. Forster