Edward Morgan Forster

38 quotes

"I believe we shall come to care about people less and lessÖ. The more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace them. It's one of the curses of London."

Edward Morgan Forster

"Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do belive in Art for Art's sake."

Edward Morgan Forster

"We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand."

Edward Morgan Forster

"The historian must have some conceptions of how men who are not historians behave."

Edward Morgan Forster

"If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country."

Edward Morgan Forster

"It is the starved imagination, not the well-nourished, that is afraid."

Edward Morgan Forster

"I have long considered it one of God's greatest mercies that the future is hidden from us. If it were not, life would surely be unbearable."

Edward Morgan Forster

"A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy devices, coming now too late, now too early, by which Society would register the quick motions of man."

Edward Morgan Forster

"It was not exactly that a man had died; something had happened to the living: they had come to a situation where character tells, and where childhood enters upon the branching paths of Youth."

Edward Morgan Forster

"Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon."

Edward Morgan Forster

"They go forth with well-developed bodies, fairly developed minds and undeveloped hearts. An undeveloped heart - not a cold one. The difference is important."

Edward Morgan Forster

"At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity."

Edward Morgan Forster

"I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves."

Edward Morgan Forster

"The historian must have some conceptions of how men who are not historians behave."

Edward Morgan Forster

"Two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism."

Edward Morgan Forster

"Railway termini ... are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas, we return."

Edward Morgan Forster

"I would rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave."

Edward Morgan Forster

"In America you can go on the air and kid the politicians, and the politicians can go on the air and kid the people. Personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever and not this outer life of telegrams and anger."

Edward Morgan Forster

"Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly; they are still entangled with the desire for ownership."

Edward Morgan Forster

"I have long considered it one of God's greatest mercies that the future is hidden from us. If it were not, life would surely be unbearable."

Edward Morgan Forster

"We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand."

Edward Morgan Forster

"I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves."

Edward Morgan Forster

"The historian must have some conceptions of how men who are not historians behave."

Edward Morgan Forster

"Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon."

Edward Morgan Forster

"It is the starved imagination, not the well-nourished, that is afraid."

Edward Morgan Forster