A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.
E. M. Forster

America is rather like life. You can usually find in it what you look for. It will probably be interesting, and it is sure to be large.
E. M. Forster

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

At the side of the everlasting why, is a yes, and a yes, and a yes.
E. M. Forster

Be soft, even if you stand to get squashed.
E. M. Forster

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 - she reminds us too much of a prima donna.
E. M. Forster

Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man.
E. M. Forster

But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to merge in something else.
E. M. Forster

Charm, in most men and nearly all women, is a decoration.
E. M. Forster

Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.
E. M. Forster


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

Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.
E. M. Forster

England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.
E. M. Forster

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

For our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better.
E. M. Forster

History develops, art stands still.
E. M. Forster

How can I know what I think till I see what I say?
E. M. Forster

I am certainly an ought and not a must.
E. M. Forster

I am so used to seeing the sort of play which deals with one man and two women. They do not leave me with the feeling I have made a full theatrical meal they do not give me the experience of the multiplicity of life.
E. M. Forster

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