E. M. Forster Quotes, Thoughts and images

You confuse what's important with what's impressive.

One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.

I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.

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

How can I know what I think till I see what I say?

The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world.

When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.

Unless we remember we cannot understand.

There's never any great risk as long as you have money.

Life is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.

What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?

Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think, creation's.

I cannot help thinking that there is something to admire in everyone, even if you do not approve of them.

One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.

Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate.

Give, do not lend; after death who will thank you?

I have no mystic faith in the people. I have in the individual.

To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.

Books have to be read it is the only way of discovering what they contain.

It's not what people do to you, but what they mean, that hurts.

Don't be mysterious; there isn't the time.

You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you.

Though life is very glorious, it is difficult.

Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.

The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then queen died of grief is a plot.

The emotions may be endless. The more we express them, the more we may have to express.

The historian records, but the novelist creates.

If we act the truth the people who really love us are sure to come back to us in the long run

Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work.

Adventures do occur, but not punctually.

Nonsense and beauty have close connections.

One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.

Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.