E.M. Forster

A Room With A View - E.M. Forster

“It is so difficult – at least, I find it difficult – to understand people who speak the truth.” (Pg 7)

“One doesn’t come to Italy for niceness, one comes for life.” (Pg 14)

“I am not of your creed, but I do believe in those who make their fellow-creatures happy.” (Pg 17)

“It is sometimes as difficult to lose one’s temper as it is difficult at other times to keep it.” (Pg 18)

“You and I, dear boy, will lie at peace in the earth that bore us, and our names will disappear as surely as our work survives.” (Pg 19)

“How can he be unhappy when he is strong and alive? What more is one to give him? And think how he has been brought up – free from all the superstition and ignorance that lead men to hate one another in the name of God. With such an education as that, I thought he was bound to grow up happy.” (Pg 21)

“But let yourself go. You are inclined to get muddled, if I may judge from last night. Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do ot understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them.” (Pg 21)

“We know that we come from the winds, and that we shall return to them; that all life is perhaps a knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness. But why should this make us unhappy? Let us rather love one another, and work and rejoice. I don’t believe in this world sorrow.” (Pg 22)

“There’s enough sorrow in the world, isn’t there, without trying to invent it.” (Pg 22)

“I cannot help thinking that there is something to admire in every one, even if you do not approve of them.” (Pg 27)

“The world is certainly full of beautiful things, if only I could come across them.” (Pg 32)

“This solitude oppressed her; she was accustomed to have her thoughts confirmed by others or, at all events, contradicted; it was too dreadful not to know whether she was thinking right or wrong.” (Pg 37)

“We literary hacks are shameless creatures. I believe there’s no secret of the human heart into which we wouldn’t pry.” (Pg 38)

“A tragedy such as yesterday’s is not the less tragic because it happened in humble life.” (Pg 39)

“Ah, the world is too much for us.” (Pg 40)

“Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there.” (Pg 50)

“So you suppose there’s any difference between Spring in nature and Spring in man? But there we go, praising the one and condemning the other as improper, ashamed that the same laws work eternally through both.” (Pg 51)

“At times our need for a sympathetic gesture is so great that we care not what exactly it signifies or how much we may have to pay for it afterwards.” (Pg 57)

“My attitude – quite an indefensible one – is that so long as I am no trouble to any one I have a right to do as I like. I know I ought to be getting money out of people, or devoting myself to things I don’t care a straw about, but somehow, I’ve not been able to begin.” (Pg 74)

“An engagement is so potent a thing that sooner or later it reduces all who speak of it to this state of cheerful awe.” (Pg 77)

“It makes a difference doesn’t it, whether we fence ourselves in, or whether we are fenced out by the barriers of others?” (Pg 79)

“Nothing can hide a petty nature.” (Pg 80)

“Passion should believe itself irresistible. It should forget civilityand consideration and all the other curses of a refined nature. Above all, it should never ask for leave where there is a right of way.” (Pg 88)

“A rebel she was, but not of the kind he understood – a rebel who desired, not a wider dwelling-room, but equality beside the man she loved.” (Pg 90)

“Secrecy has this disadvantage: we lose the sense of proportion; we cannot tell whether our secret is important or not.” (Pg 98)

“Let me give you a useful tip: attribute nothing to fate. Don’t say, ‘I didn’t do this,’ for you did it, ten to one.” (Pg 104)

“No one is perfect, and surely it is wiser to discover the imperfections before wedlock.” (Pg 109)

“You are young, dears, and however clever young people are, and however many books they read, they will never guess what it feels like to grow old.” (Pg 114)

“Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome “nerves” or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire.” (Pg 116)

“It makes such a difference when you see a person with beautiful things behind him unexpectedly.” (Pg 120)

“Love felt and returned, love which our bodies exact and our hearts have transfigured, love which is the more real thing that we shall ever meet, reappeared now as the world’s enemy, and she must stifle it.” (Pg 132)

“I want you to have your own thoughts even when I hold you in my arms.” (Pg 136)

“I won’t be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult. Can’t I be trusted to fae the truth but I must get it second-hand through you?” (Pg 141)

“When love comes, that is reality.” (Pg 162)

“It isn’t possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.” (Pg 166)