Quote

The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal. Both assumptions are false: both of them must be accepted as true if we are to go on eating and working and loving, and are to keep open a few breathing holes for the human spirit.

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
Must
Open
Breathing
People
Working
Behave
Society
False
Keep
Accepted
Spirit
Loving
Assumptions
True
Eating
Immortal
Human
Eternal
Assumption
Humans
Respect
Holes

More quotes by E. M. Forster

Image
The English countryside, its growth and its destruction, is a genuine and tragic theme.
E. M. Forster
Image
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.
E. M. Forster
Image
By the side of the everlasting Why there is a Yes--a transitory Yes if you like, but a Yes.
E. M. Forster
Image
Lord I disbelieve - help thou my unbelief.
E. M. Forster
Image
You want to love everyone equally, and that's worse than impossible--it's wrong.
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
Expansion, that is the idea the novelist must cling to, not completion, not rounding off, but opening out.
E. M. Forster
Image
. . . life is sometimes life and sometimes only a drama, and one must learn to distinguish t'other from which . . .
E. M. Forster
Image
A critic has no right to the narrowness which is the frequent prerogative of the creative artist.
E. M. Forster
Image
Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.
E. M. Forster
Image
One has two duties - to be worried and not to be worried.
E. M. Forster
Image
We may divide characters into flat and round.
E. M. Forster
Image
One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.
E. M. Forster
Image
The emotions may be endless. The more we express them, the more we may have to express.
E. M. Forster
Image
I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals.
E. M. Forster
Image
I do not believe in Belief.
E. M. Forster
Image
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
Image
Pathos, piety, courage, they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value.
E. M. Forster
Image
They had nothing in common but the English language.
E. M. Forster
Image
When I think of what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love it is one of the moments for which the world was made.
E. M. Forster