M. Forster Quotations

She could not explain in so many words, but she felt that those who prepare for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy.

She loved him with too clear a vision to fear his cloudiness.

I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country

Ulysses . . . is a dogged attempt to cover the universe with mud.

This opera is my Nunc Dimittis, in that it dismisses me peacefully and convinces me I have achieved.

Books have to be read (worse luck it takes so long a time). It is the only way of discovering what they contain. A few savage tribes eat them, but reading is the only method of assimilation revealed to the West.

So Two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. Two cheers are quite enough; there is no occasion to give three. Only Love the Beloved Republic deserves that.

It is the one orderly product our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths; it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden the best evidence we can give of our dignity.

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.

American women shoot the hippopotamus with eyebrows made of platinum