E. M. Forster (1879 – 1970)
English novelist, short story writer, and essayist.
Science, when applied to personal relationships, is always just wrong.
There's nothing like a debate to teach one quickness. I often wish I had gone in for them when I was a youngster. It would have helped me no end.
No disease of the imagination is so difficult to cure, as that which is complicated with the dread of guilt: fancy and conscience then act interchangeably upon us, and so often shift their places, that the illusions of one are not distinguished from the dictates of the other.
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.
‘Why are pictures like this allowed?’ he suddenly cried. He had stopped in front of a colonial print in which the martyrdom of St Agatha was depicted with all the fervour that incompetence could command.
‘It’s only a saint,’ said Lady Peaslake, placidly raising her head.
‘How disgusting – and how ugly’
‘Yes, very. It’s Roman Catholic.’
I believe in aristocracy... — if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power... but... of the sensitive, the considerate... Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages... there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others as well as themselves... considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure.
There's enough sorrow in the world, isn't there, without trying to invent it.
Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work.
There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer.