Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Character
Lack
Characterize
Integrity
Solidity
National
Caution
England
Efficiency
Imagination
Hypocrisy
Middle
Classes
Quality
Characteristics
Class
Qualities
More quotes by E. M. Forster
Without form, the sensitiveness vanishes.
E. M. Forster
He educated Maurice, or rather his spirit educated Maurice's spirit, for they themselves became equal. Neither thought Am I led am I leading? Love had caught him out of triviality and Maurice out of bewilderment in order that two imperfect souls might touch perfection.
E. M. Forster
How few writers can prostitute all their powers!
E. M. Forster
Man has to pick up the use of his functions as he goes along- especially the function of Love.
E. M. Forster
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
Only connect!...Only connect the prose and the passion.
E. M. Forster
Passion does not blind. No. Passion is sanity, and the woman you love, she is the only person you will ever really understand.
E. M. Forster
I won't be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult.
E. M. Forster
What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.
E. M. Forster
Beauty ought to look a little surprised: it is the emotion that best suits her face. The beauty who does not look surprised, who accepts her position as her due - she reminds us too much of a prima donna.
E. M. Forster
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.
E. M. Forster
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
For it is a serious thing to have been watched. We all radiate something curiously intimate when we believe ourselves to be alone.
E. M. Forster
Pathos, piety, courage, they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value.
E. M. Forster
They had nothing in common but the English language.
E. M. Forster
All invitations must proceed from heaven perhaps perhaps it is futile for men to initiate their own unity, they do but widen the gulfs between them by the attempt.
E. M. Forster
Letters have to pass two tests before they can be classed as good: they must express the personality both of the writer and of the recipient.
E. M. Forster
The bully and his victim never quite forget their first relations.
E. M. Forster
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
The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say yesterday I was happy, today I am not.
E. M. Forster