Quote

What the world most needs today are negative virtues - not minding people, not being huffy, touchy, irritable or revengeful.

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
Today
Needs
Revengeful
World
Irritable
People
Minding
Touchy
Virtues
Negative
Virtue

More quotes by E. M. Forster

Image
This desire to govern a woman -- it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together.... But I do love you surely in a better way then he does. He thought. Yes -- really in a better way. I want you to have your own thoughts even when I hold you in my arms.
E. M. Forster
Image
The historian records, but the novelist creates.
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
I would rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave.
E. M. Forster
Image
Don't believe those lies about intellectual people. They're only written to soothe the majority.
E. M. Forster
Image
It is my fate and perhaps my temperament to sign agreements with fools.
E. M. Forster
Image
You want to love everyone equally, and that's worse than impossible--it's wrong.
E. M. Forster
Image
Riposte of that old lady in the anecdote who was accused by her nieces of being illogical, Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish! How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?
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
Intuition attracts those who wish to be spiritual without any bother, because it promises a heaven where the intuitions of others can be ignored.
E. M. Forster
Image
We may divide characters into flat and round.
E. M. Forster
Image
To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy can indulge the poor cannot afford it.
E. M. Forster
Image
As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through exams, so long must we take the examination system seriously. If another ladder to employment was contrived, much so-called education would disappear, and no one be a penny the stupider.
E. M. Forster
Image
No one is more triumphant than the man who chooses a worthy subject and masters all its facts.
E. M. Forster
Image
Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.
E. M. Forster
Image
You confuse what's important with what's impressive.
E. M. Forster
Image
Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence.
E. M. Forster
Image
Surely the only sound foundation for a civilization is a sound state of mind.
E. M. Forster
Image
One marvels why the middle classes still insist on so much discomfort for their children at such expense to themselves.
E. M. Forster
Image
I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals.
E. M. Forster