E. M. Forster quotes

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Surely the only sound foundation for a civilization is a sound state of mind.
E. M. Forster
Civilization
Mind
Sound
State
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
Children
Luck
World
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
Grief
Queen
The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.
E. M. Forster
Death
Life
Love
Food
Facts
Sleep
The more highly public life is organized the lower does its morality sink.
E. M. Forster
Life
Morality
Public
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
Men
Experience
Genius
Gain
Historians
Will
World
The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.
E. M. Forster
Belief
Curiosity
Humanism
Mind
Race
Taste
The final test for a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define.
E. M. Forster
Affection
Friends
Will
Oxford is Oxford: not a mere receptacle for youth, like Cambridge. Perhaps it wants its inmates to love it rather than to love one another.
E. M. Forster
Love
Youth
The English countryside, its growth and its destruction, is a genuine and tragic theme.
E. M. Forster
Growth
Destruction
English
Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
E. M. Forster
Nothing
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
Books
Influence
So, two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism.
E. M. Forster
Criticism
Variety
Reverence is fatal to literature.
E. M. Forster
Literature
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.
E. M. Forster
Adventure