E. M. Forster Quotations

Science explained people, but could not understand them. After long centuries among the bones and muscles it might be advancing to knowledge of the nerves, but this would never give understanding

Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.

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.

Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch.

Very notable was his distinction between coarseness and vulgarity, coarseness, revealing something; vulgarity, concealing something.

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.

Only people who have been allowed to practise freedom can have the grown-up look in their eyes.

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.

The sort of poetry I seek resides in objects man can't touch.

We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand.