The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.
E. M. Forster

The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead. He can only gain that conception through personal experience, and he can only use his personal experiences when he is a genius.
E. M. Forster

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

The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.
E. M. Forster

The more highly public life is organized the lower does its morality sink.
E. M. Forster

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 got ourselves.
E. M. Forster

The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.
E. M. Forster

The sadness of the incomplete, the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art.
E. M. Forster

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

The woman who can't influence her husband to vote the way she wants ought to be ashamed of herself.
E. M. Forster

The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists.
E. M. Forster

There is much good luck in the world, but it is luck. We are none of us safe. We are children, playing or quarrelling on the line.
E. M. Forster

There is something majestic in the bad taste of Italy.
E. M. Forster

There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer.
E. M. Forster

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

Those who prepared for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy.
E. M. Forster

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.
E. M. Forster

Tolerance is a very dull virtue. It is boring. Unlike love, it has always had a bad press. It is negative. It merely means putting up with people, being able to stand things.
E. M. Forster

Two cheers for Democracy; one because it admits variety, and two because it permits criticism.
E. M. Forster

Unless we remember we cannot understand.
E. M. Forster