E.M. Forster

Why children?' he asked. 'Why always children? For love to end where it begins is far more beautiful, and Nature knows it.

Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him.

I did not fear that I might tread upon a live rail and be killed. I feared something far more intangible-doing what was not contemplated by the Machine. Then I said to myself, __an is the measure_, and I went, and after many visits I found an opening.

Miss Abbott, don't worry over me. Some people are born not to do things. I'm one of them.

Culture had worked in her own case, but during the last few weeks she had doubted whether it humanized the majority, so wide and so widening is the gulf that stretches between the natural and the philosophic man, so many the good chaps who are wrecked in trying to cross it.

Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wishes to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time.

If you introduce the human figure you at once arouse either disgust or desire.

To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art.

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 believe in Art for Art's sake.

But the body is deeper than the soul and its secrets inscrutable.

There stood a young man who had the figure of a Greek athlete and the face of an English one...Just where he began to be beautiful the clothes started.

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__he reminds us too much of a prima donna.

My father says that there is only one perfect view _ the view of the sky straight over our heads, and that all these views on earth are but bungled copies of it.

Have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet at the same time - beautiful?

Pity, if one can generalize, is at the bottom of woman. When men like us, it is for our better qualities, and however tender their liking, we dare not be unworthy of it, or they will quietly let us go. But unworthiness stimulates woman. It brings out her deeper nature, for good or for evil.

I won't be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult.

He had a theory that musicians are incredibly complex, and know far less than other artists what they want and what they are; that they puzzle themselves as well as their friends; that their psychology is a modern development, and has not yet been understood.

Why can't we be friends now?" said the other, holding him affectionately. "It's what I want. It's what you want." But the horses didn't want it _ they swerved apart: the earth didn't want it, sending up rocks through which riders must pass single file; the temple, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they emerged from the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn't want it, they said in their hundred voices "No, not yet," and the sky said "No, not there.