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A Novel Is Based On Evidence, + Or -x, The Unknown Quantity Being The Temperament Of The Novelist, And The Unknown Quantity Always Modifies The Effect Of The Evidence, And Sometimes Transforms It Entirely.

-E. M. Forster

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A Novel Is Based

E. M. Forster

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A Novel Is Based On Evidence, + Or -x, The Unknown Quantity Being The Temperament Of The Novelist, And The Unknown Quantity Always Modifies The Effect Of The Evidence, And Sometimes Transforms It Entirely.

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More From E. M. Forster

Only Connect!...only Connect The Prose And The Passion.

At The Moment They Vanished They Were Everywhere, The Cool Benediction Of The Night Descended, The Stars Sparkled, And The Whole Universe Was A Hill.

Romance Only Dies With Life. No Pair Of Pincers Will Ever Pull It Out Of Us. But There Is A Spurious Sentiment Which Cannot Resist The Unexpected And The Incongruous And The Grotesque. A Touch Will Loosen It, And The Sooner It Goes From Us The Better.

Don't Believe Those Lies About Intellectual People. They're Only Written To Soothe The Majority.

It's Miles Worse For You Than That; I'm In Love With Your Gamekeeper.

How Can The Mind Take Hold Of Such A Country? Generations Of Invaders Have Tried, But They Remain In Exile. The Important Towns They Build Are Only Retreats, Their Quarrels The Malaise Of Men Who Cannot Find Their Way Home. India Knows Of Their Trouble. She Knows Of The Whole World's Trouble, To Its Uttermost Depth. She Calls "come" Through Her Hundred Mouths, Through Objects Ridiculous And August. But Come To What? She Has Never Defined. She Is Not A Promise, Only An Appeal.

An Efficiency-regime Cannot Be Run Without A Few Heroes Stuck About It To Carry Off The Dullness - Much As Plums Have To Be Put Into Bad Pudding To Make It Palatable.

An Acquaintance Had Become A Lover, Might Become A Husband, But Would Retain All That She Had Noted In The Acquaintance; And Love Must Confirm An Old Relation Rather Than Reveal A New One.

It Makes A Difference Doesn't It, Whether We Fully Fence Ourselves In, Or Whether We Are Fenced Out By The Barriers Of Others?

Making A Difference

The Emotions May Be Endless. The More We Express Them, The More We May Have To Express.

I Would Rather Be A Coward Than Brave Because People Hurt You When You Are Brave.

School Was The Unhappiest Time Of My Life And The Worst Trick It Ever Played On Me Was To Pretend That It Was The World In Miniature. For It Hindered Me From Discovering How Lovely And Delightful And Kind The World Can Be, And How Much Of It Is Intelligible.

There's Enough Sorrow In The World, Isn't There, Without Trying To Invent It.

A Novel Must Give A Sense Of Permanence As Well As A Sense Of Life.

The Traveller Who Has Gone To Italy To Study The Tactile Values Of Giotto, Or The Corruption Of The Papacy, May Return Remembering Nothing But The Blue Sky And The Men And Women Who Live Under It.

Riposte Of "that Old Lady In The Anecdote Who Was Accused By Her Nieces Of Being Illogical," Logic! Good Gracious! What Rubbish! How Can I Tell What I Think Till I See What I Say?

Expansion, That Is The Idea The Novelist Must Cling To, Not Completion, Not Rounding Off, But Opening Out.

I Know By Experience That The Poets Are Right: Love Is Eternal.

Some Leave Our Life With Tears, Others With An Insane Frigidity; Mrs. Wilcox Had Taken The Middle Course, Which Only Rarer Natures Can Pursue. She Had Kept Proportion. She Had Told A Little Of Her Grim Secret To Her Friends, But Not Too Much; She Had Shut Up Her Heart--almost, But Not Entirely. It Is Thus, If There Is Any Rule, That We Ought To Die--neither As Victim Nor As Fanatic, But As The Seafarer Who Can Greet With An Equal Eye The Deep That He Is Entering, And The Shore That He Must Leave.

Human Beings Have Their Great Chance In The Novel.

Don't Be Mysterious; There Isn't The Time.

What The World Most Needs Today Are Negative Virtues - Not Minding People, Not Being Huffy, Touchy, Irritable Or Revengeful.

Surely The Only Sound Foundation For A Civilization Is A Sound State Of Mind.

It So Happened That Lucy, Who Found Daily Life Rather Chaotic, Entered A More Solid World When She Opened The Piano. She Was Then No Longer Either Deferential Or Patronizing; No Longer Either A Rebel Or A Slave.

The Sort Of Poetry I Seek Only Resides In Objects Man Can't Touch - Like England 's Grass Network Of Lanes 100 Years Ago, But Today He Can Destroy Them And Only Lord Farrer Keeps Him From Doing It.

Do 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.

Life - No, I've Nothing To Teach You About It For The Moment. May Be Writing About It Another Week.

One Person With Passion Is Better Than Forty People Merely Interested.

One Minute. You Know Nothing About Him. He Probably Has His Own Joys And Interests- Wife, Children, Snug Little Home. That's Where We Practical Fellows'- He Smiled-'are More Tolerant Than You Intellectuals. We Live And Let Live, And Assume That Things Are Jogging On Fairly Well Elsewhere, And That The Ordinary Plain Man May Be Trusted To Look After His Own Affairs.

A Novelist Can Shift View-point If It Comes Off. ... Indeed, This Power To Expand And Contract Perception (of Which The Shifting View-point Is A Symptom), This Right To Intermittent Knowledge - I Find One Of The Great Advantages Of The Novel-form ... This Intermittence Lends In The Long Run Variety And Colour To The Experiences We Receive.

Science, When Applied To Personal Relationships, Is Always Just Wrong .

Personal Relationships

Be Soft, Even If You Stand To Get Squashed.

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.

Lucy Was Suffering From The Most Grievous Wrong Which This World Has Yet Discovered: Diplomatic Advantage Had Been Taken Of Her Sincerity, Of Her Craving For Sympathy And Love. Such A Wrong Is Not Easily Forgotten. Never Again Did She Expose Herself Without Due Consideration And Precaution Against Rebuff. And Such A Wrong May React Disastrously Upon The Soul.

I Think - I Think - I Think How Little They Think What Lies So Near Them.

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.

People Have Their Own Deaths As Well As Their Own Lives, And Even If There Is Nothing Beyond Death, We Shall Differ In Our Nothingness.

Most Of Life Is So Dull That There Is Nothing To Be Said About It, And The Books And Talks That Would Describe It As Interesting Are Obliged To Exaggerate, In The Hope Of Justifying Their Own Existence. Inside Its Cocoon Of Work Or Social Obligation, The Human Spirit Slumbers For The Most Part, Registering The Distinction Between Pleasure And Pain, But Not Nearly As Alert As We Pretend. There Are Periods In The Most Thrilling Day During Which Nothing Happens, And Though We Continue To Exclaim, "i Do Enjoy Myself", Or , "i Am Horrified," We Are Insincere.

I Distrust Great Men... I Believe In Aristocracy, Though... Its Members Are To Be Found In All Nations And Classes, And All Through The Ages, And There Is A Secret Understanding Between Them When They Meet... They Are Sensitive For Others As Well As For Themselves, They Are Considerate Without Being Fussy, Their Pluck Is Not Swankiness But The Power To Endure, And They Can Take A Joke.

Axiom : Novel Must Have Either One Living Character Or A Perfect Pattern: Fails Otherwise.

I'm A Holy Man Minus The Holiness. Hand That On To Your Three Spies, And Tell Them To Put It In Their Pipes.

The Sun Was Already Declining And Each Of The Trees Held A Premonition Of Night.

Love Felt And Returned, Love Which Our Bodies Exact And Our Hearts Have Transfigured, Love Which Is The Most Real Thing That We Shall Ever Meet, Reappeared Now As The World's Enemy, And She Must Stifle It.

Why Can't We Be Friends Now?" Said The Other, Holding Him Affectionately. "it's What I Want. It's What You Want." But The Horses Didn't Want It — They Swerved Apart: The Earth Didn't Want It, Sending Up Rocks Through Which Riders Must Pass Single File; The Temple, The Tank, The Jail, The Palace, The Birds, The Carrion, The Guest House, That Came Into View As They Emerged From The Gap And Saw Mau Beneath: They Didn't Want It, They Said In Their Hundred Voices "no, Not Yet," And The Sky Said "no, Not There.

We Must Be Willing To Let Go Of The Life We Have Planned, So As To Have The Life That Is Waiting For Us.

We May Divide Characters Into Flat And Round.

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.

All Invitations Must Proceed From Heaven Perhaps; Perhaps It Is Futile For Men To Initiate Their Own Unity, They Do But Widen The Gulfs Between Them By The Attempt.

When Love Flies It Is Remembered Not As Love But As Something Else. Blessed Are The Uneducated, Who Forget It Entirely, And Are Never Conscious Of Folly Or Pruriency In The Past, Of Long Aimless Conversations.

Self-pity? I See No Moral Objections To It, The Smell Drives People Away, But That's A Practical Objection, And Occasionally An Advantage.

They Cared For No One, They Were Outside Humanity, And Death, Had It Come, Would Only Have Continued Their Pursuit Of A Retreating Horizon.

You Can Transmute Love, Ignore It, Muddle It, But You Can Never Pull It Out Of You.

Room With A View

It Is Never Possible For A Novelist To Deny Time Inside The Fabric Of His Novel: He Must Cling, However Lightly, To The Thread Of His Story, He Must Touch The Interminable Tapeworm, Otherwise He Becomes Unintelligible, Which, In His Case, Is A Blunder.

Hope, Politeness, The Blowing Of A Nose, The Squeak Of A Boot, All Produce "boum.

Towns Are After All Excrescences, Grey Fluxions, Where Men, Hurrying To Find One Another, Have Lost Themselves.

Passion Does Not Blind. No. Passion Is Sanity, And The Woman You Love, She Is The Only Person You Will Ever Really Understand.

Faith, To My Mind, Is A Stiffening Process, A Sort Of Mental Starch, Which Ought To Be Applied As Sparingly As Possible. I Dislike The Stuff. I Do Not Believe In It, For Its Own Sake, At All... My Lawgivers Are Erasmus And Montaigne, Not Moses And St Paul. My Temple Stands Not Upon Mount Moriah But In The Elysian Field Where Even The Immoral Are Admitted. My Motto Is 'lord, I Disbelieve - Help Thou My Unbelief.

The Tragedy Of Preparedness Has Scarcely Been Handled, Save By The Greeks. Life Is Indeed Dangerous, But Not In The Way Morality Would Have Us Believe. It Is Indeed Unmanageable, But The Essence Of It Is Not A Battle. It Is Unmanageable Because It Is A Romance, And Its Essence Is Romantic Beauty.

The Work Of Art Assumes The Existence Of The Perfect Spectator, And Is Indifferent To The Fact That No Such Person Exists.

Let Yourself Go. Pull Out From The Depths Those Thoughts That You Do Not Understand, And Spread Them Out In The Sunlight And Know The Meaning Of Them.

By The Side Of The Everlasting Why There Is A Yes--a Transitory Yes If You Like, But A Yes.

Room With A View

Characters Must Not Brood Too Long. They Must Not Waste Time Running Up And Down Ladders In Their Own Insides.

Then She Lay On Her Back And Gazed At The Cloudless Sky. Mr. Beebe, Whose Opinion Of Her Rose Daily, Whispered To His Niece That That Was The Proper Way To Behave If Any Little Thing Went Wrong.

The Idea That Nations Should Love One Another, Or That Business Concerns Or Marketing Boards Should Love One Another, Or That A Man In Portugal Should Love A Man In Peru Of Whom He Has Never Heard -it Is Absurd, Unreal, Dangerous. The Fact Is We Can Only Love What We Know Personally. And We Cannot Know Much.

Lord I Disbelieve - Help Thou My Unbelief.

Have You Ever Noticed That There Are People Who Do Things Which Are Most Indelicate, And Yet At The Same Time - Beautiful?

Room With A View

A Poem Is True If It Hangs Together. Information Points To Something Else. A Poem Points To Nothing But Itself.

English Literature Is A Flying Fish.

If God Could Tell The Story Of The Universe, The Universe Would Become Fictitious.

I Am An Unspeakable Of The Oscar Wilde Sort.

England Still Waits For The Supreme Moment Of Her Literature--for The Great Poet Who Shall Voice Her, Or, Better Still, For The Thousand Little Poets Whose Voices Shall Pass Into Our Common Talk.

Sometimes I Think Too Much Fuss Is Made About Marriage. Century After Century Of Carnal Embracement And We're Still No Nearer To Understanding One Another.

Naked I Came Into The World, Naked I Shall Go Out Of It! And A Very Good Thing Too, For It Reminds Me That I Am Naked Under My Shirt, Whatever Its Colour.

But Nothing In India Is Identifiable, The Mere Asking Of A Question Causes It To Disappear Or To Merge In Something Else.

We Are All Like Scheherazade's Husband, In That We Want To Know What Happens Next.

How Few Writers Can Prostitute All Their Powers!

The Fact Is We Can Only Love What We Know Personally. And We Cannot Know Much. In Public Affairs, In The Rebuilding Of Civilization, Something Less Dramatic And Emotional Is Needed, Namely Tolerance.

Are Not Beauty And Delicacy The Same?

Room With A View

Their Quarrel Was No More Surprising Than Are Most Quarrels — Inevitable At The Time, Incredible Afterwards.

Hardship Is Vanishing, But So Is Style, And The Two Are More Closely Connected Than The Present Generation Supposes.

Excuse My Mistakes, Realize My Limitations. Life Is Not Easy As We Know It On The Earth.

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.

The Kingdom Of Music Is Not The Kingdom Of This World; It Will Accept Those Whom Breeding And Intellect And Culture Have Alike Rejected.

Intuition Attracts Those Who Wish To Be Spiritual Without Any Bother, Because It Promises A Heaven Where The Intuitions Of Others Can Be Ignored.

Our Easiest Approach To A Definition Of Any Aspect Of Fiction Is Always By Considering The Sort Of Demand It Makes On The Reader. Curiosity For The Story, Human Feelings And A Sense Of Value For The Characters, Intelligence And Memory For The Plot. What Does Fantasy Ask Of Us? It Asks Us To Pay Something Extra.

One Is Certain Of Nothing But The Truth Of One's Own Emotions.

So, Two Cheers For Democracy: One Because It Admits Variety And Two Because It Permits Criticism.

Democracies Have

I'd Far Rather Leave A Thought Behind Me Than A Child. Other People Can Have Children.

Men Yearn For Poetry Though They May Not Confess It; They Desire That Joy Shall Be Graceful And Sorrow August And Infinity Have A Form.

I Distrust Great Men. They Produce A Desert Of Uniformity Around Them And Often A Pool Of Blood Too, And I Always Feel A Little Man's Pleasure When They Come A Cropper.

Those Who Prepared For All The Emergencies Of Life Beforehand May Equip Themselves At The Expense Of Joy.

She Only Felt That The Candle Would Burn Better, The Packing Go Easier, The World Be Happier, If She Could Give And Receive Some Human Love.

For You Cannot Have Gentility Without Paying For It.

One Has Two Duties - To Be Worried And Not To Be Worried.

It Is Thus, If There Is Any Rule, That We Ought To Die--neither As Victim Nor As Fanatic, But As The Seafarer Who Can Greet With An Equal Eye The Deep That He Is Entering, And The Shore That He Must Leave.

What Is The Good Of Your Stars And Trees, Your Sunrise And The Wind, If They Do Not Enter Into Our Daily Lives? They Have Never Entered Into Mine, But Into Yours, We Thought--haven't We All To Struggle Against Life's Daily Greyness, Against Pettiness, Against Mechanical Cheerfulness, Against Suspicion? I Struggle By Remembering My Friends; Others I Have Known By Remembering Some Place--some Beloved Place Or Tree--we Thought You One Of These.

In The Creative State A Man Is Taken Out Of Himself. He Lets Down As It Were A Bucket Into His Subconscious, And Draws Up Something Which Is Normally Beyond His Reach. He Mixes This Thing With His Normal Experiences And Out Of The Mixture He Makes A Work Of Art.

It Is Now Only In Letters I Write What I Feel: Not In Literature Any More, And I Seldom Say It, Because I Keep Trying To Be Amusing.

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.

It Isn't Possible To Love And 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.

It Was Unbearable, And He Thought Again, 'how Unhappy I Am!' And Became Happier.

The Crime Of Suicide Lies Rather In Its Disregard For The Feelings Of Those Whom We Leave Behind.

Love Is A Great Force In Private Life; It Is Indeed The Greatest Of All Things; But Love In Public Affairs Does Not Work.

It Is So Difficult - At Least, I Find It Difficult - To Understand People Who Speak The Truth.

A Funeral Is Not Death, Any More Than Baptism Is Birth Or Marriage Union. All Three Are The Clumsy Devices, Coming Now Too Late, Now Too Early, By Which Society Would Register The Quick Motions Of Man.

In The Creative State A Man Is Taken Out Of Himself.

Neanderthal Man Listened To Stories, If One May Judge By The Shape Of His Skull.

The Bully And His Victim Never Quite Forget Their First Relations.

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.

“it Is Fate That I Am Here,” Persisted George. “but You Can Call It Italy If It Makes You Less Unhappy.”

Room With A View

Just As Words Have Two Functions - Information And Creation - So Each Human Mind Has Two Personalities, One On The Surface, One Deeper Down. The Upper Personality... Is Conscious And Alert... The Lower Personality Is A... Perfect Fool, But Without It There Is No Literature.

Take An Old Man's Word; There's Nothing Worse Than A Muddle In All The World. It Is Easy To Face Death And Fate, And The Things That Sound So Dreadful. It Is On My Muddles That I Look Back With Horror - On The Things That I Might Have Avoided. We Can Help One Another But Little. I Used To Think I Could Teach Young People The Whole Of Life, But I Know Better Now, And All My Teaching Of George Has Come Down To This: Beware Of Muddle.

She Would Only Point Out The Salvation That Was Latent In His Own Soul, And In The Soul Of Every Man. Only Connect! That Was The Whole Of Her Sermon. Only Connect The Prose And The Passion, And Both Will Be Exalted, And Human Love Will Be Seen At Its Height. Live In Fragments No Longer. Only Connect, And The Beast And The Monk, Robbed Of The Isolation That Is Life To Either, Will Die.

I Have Said That Each Aspect Of The Novel Demands A Different Quality Of The Reader. Well, The Prophetic Aspect Demands Two Qualities: Humility And The Suspension Of The Sense Of Humour.

He Educated Maurice, Or Rather His Spirit Educated Maurice's Spirit, For They Themselves Became Equal. Neither Thought "am I Led; Am I Leading?" Love Had Caught Him Out Of Triviality And Maurice Out Of Bewilderment In Order That Two Imperfect Souls Might Touch Perfection.

I Am Certainly An Ought And Not A Must.

Of Course He Despised The World As A Whole; Every Thoughtful Man Should; It Is Almost A Test Of Refinement.

All Men Are Equal — All Men, That Is To Say, Who Possess Umbrellas.

Not Only In Sex, But In All Things Men Have Moved Blindly, Have Evolved Out Of Slime To Dissolve Into It When This Accident Of Consequences Is Over.

Liking One Person Is An Extra Reason For Liking Another.

It Isn't Possible To Love And To Part.

Room With A View

Roger Fry Is Painting Me. It Is Too Like Me At Present, But He Is Confident He Will Be Able To Alter That. Post-impressionism Is At Present Confined To My Lower Lip... And To My Chin.

In Time, Mr Hall, One Gets To Recognize That Sneer, That Hardness, For Fornication Extends Far Beyond The Actual Deed. Were It A Deed Only, I For One Would Not Hold It Anathema. But When The Nations Went A Whoring They Invariably Ended By Denying God, I Think, And Until All Sexual Irregularities And Not Some Of Them Are Penal The Church Will Never Reconquer England.

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.

Railway Termini Are Our Gates To The Glorious And The Unknown

...the True Spirit Of Gastronomic Joylessness. Porridge Fills The Englishman Up, And Prunes Clear Him Out.

Pathos, Piety, Courage, They Exist, But Are Identical, And So Is Filth. Everything Exists, Nothing Has Value.

Aziz Winked At Him Slowly And Said: “...there Are Many Ways Of Being A Man; Mine Is To Express What Is Deepest In My Heart.

For It Is A Serious Thing To Have Been Watched. We All Radiate Something Curiously Intimate When We Believe Ourselves To Be Alone.

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.

He Doesn't Want You To Be Real, And To Think And To Live. He Doesn't Love You. But I Love You. I Want You To Have Your Own Thoughts And Ideas And Feelings, Even When I Hold You In My Arms.

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.

What Is Wonderful About Great Literature Is That It Transforms The Man Who Reads It Towards The Condition Of The Man Who Wrote.

It Comes To This Then: There Always Have Been People Like Me And Always Will Be, And Generally They Have Been Persecuted.

It Is Easy To Sympathize At A Distance,' Said An Old Gentleman With A Beard. 'i Value More The Kind Word That Is Spoken Close To My Ear.

All That Is Observable In A Man-that Is To Say His Actions And Such Of His Spiritual Existence As Can Be Deduced From His Actions-falls Into The Domain Of History.

The Four Characteristics Of Humanism Are Curiosity, A Free Mind, Belief In Good Taste, And Belief In The Human Race.

Man Has To Pick Up The Use Of His Functions As He Goes Along- Especially The Function Of Love.

In The Light Of Her Son's Comment She Reconsidered The Scene At The Mosque, To See Whose Impression Was Correct. Yes It Could Be Worked Into Quite An Unpleasant Scene. The Doctor Had Begun By Bullying Her, Had Said Mrs Callendar Was Nice, And Then - Finding The Ground Safe - Had Changed; He Had Alternately Whined Over His Grievances And Patronized Her, Had Run A Dozen Ways In A Single Sentence, Had Been Unreliable, Inquisitive, Vain. Yes, It Was All True, But How False As A Summary Of The Man; The Essential Life Of Him Had Been Slain.

Give, Do Not Lend; After Death Who Will Thank You?

I Am Actually What My Age And My Upbringing Have Made Me - A Bourgeois Who Adheres To The British Constitution, Adheres To It Rather Than Supports It, And The Fact That This Isn't Dignified Doesn't Worry Me.

Belfastas Uncivilised As Ever--savage Black Mothers In Houses Of Dark Red Brick, Friendly Manufacturers Too Drunk To Entertain You When You Arrive. It Amuses Me Till I Get Tired.

Our Final Experience, Like Our First, Is Conjectural. We Move Between Two Darkness's.

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.

The English Countryside, Its Growth And Its Destruction, Is A Genuine And Tragic Theme.

I Hated The Idleness, The Stupidity, The Respectability, The Petty Unselfishness.

It Is The Vice Of A Vulgar Mind To Be Thrilled By Bigness, To Think That A Thousand Square Miles Are A Thousand Times More Wonderful Than One Square Mile, And That A Million Square Miles Are Almost The Same As Heaven.

Books Have To Be Read (worse Luck It Takes So Long A Time). It Is The Only Way Of Discovering What They Contain. A Few Savage Tribes Eat Them, But Reading Is The Only Method Of Assimilation Revealed To The West.

This Solitude Opressed 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.

I Do Not Believe In Belief.

I Believe In Teaching People To Be Individuals, And To Understand Other Individuals.

The Historian Records, But The Novelist Creates.

Death Destroys A Man, But The Idea Of Death Saves Him.

Letters Have To Pass Two Tests Before They Can Be Classed As Good: They Must Express The Personality Both Of The Writer And Of The Recipient.

'a Friend,' He Repeated, Sentimental Suddenly. 'someone To Last Your Whole Life And You His. I Suppose Such A Thing Can't Really Happen Outside Sleep.'

If Miss Honeychurch Ever Takes To Live As She Plays, It Will Be Very Exciting--both For Us And For Her.

Suspense: The Only Literary Tool That Has Any Effect Upon Tyrants And Savages.

It Is The Function Of The Novelist To Reveal The Hidden Life At Its Source: To Tell Us More About Queen Victoria Than Could Be Known, And Thus To Produce A Character Who Is Not The Queen Victoria Of History.

We Are Willing Enough To Praise Freedom When She Is Safely Tucked Away In The Past And Cannot Be A Nuisance. In The Present, Amidst Dangers Whose Outcome We Cannot Foresee, We Get Nervous About Her, And Admit Censorship.

Freedom Of Speech

. . . Life Is Sometimes Life And Sometimes Only A Drama, And One Must Learn To Distinguish T'other From Which . . .

As Her Time In Florence Drew To A Close She Was Only At Ease Amongst Those To Whom She Felt Indifferent.

At Night, When The Curtains Are Drawn And The Fire Flickers, My Books Attain A Collective Dignity.

Failure Or Success Seems To Have Been Allotted To Men By Their Stars. But They Retain The Power Of Wriggling, Of Fighting With Their Star Or Against It, And In The Whole Universe The Only Really Interesting Movement Is The Wriggle.

Was Mrs. Wilcox One Of The Unsatisfactory People- There Are Many Of Them- Who Dangle Intimacy And Then Withdraw It? They Evoke Our Interests And Affections, And Keep The Life Of The Spirit Dawdling Around Them. Then They Withdraw. When Physical Passion Is Involved, There Is A Definite Name For Such Behaviour- Flirting- And If Carried Far Enough, It Is Punishable By Law. But No Law- Not Public Opinion, Even- Punishes Those Who Coquette With Friendship, Though The Dull Ache That They Inflict, The Sense Of Misdirected Effort And Exhaustion, May Be As Intolerable. Was She One Of These?

As For 'story' I Never Yet Did Enjoy A Novel Or Play In Which Someone Didn't Tell Me Afterward That There Was Something Wrong With The Story, So That's Going To Be No Drawback As Far As I'm Concerned. "good Lord, Why Am I So Bored" "i Know; It Must Be The Plot Developing Harmoniously." So I Often Reply To Myself, And There Rises Before Me My Special Nightmare That Of The Writer As Craftsman, Natty And Deft.

Do We Find Happiness So Often That We Should Turn It Off The Box When It Happens To Sit There?

Finding Happiness

Though Life Is Very Glorious, It Is Difficult.

The Hungry And The Homeless Don't Care About Liberty Any More Than They Care About Cultural Heritage. To Pretend That They Do Care Is Cant.

Nature Pulls One Way And Human Nature Another.

The Most Successful Career Must Show A Waste Of Strength That Might Have Removed Mountains, And The Most Unsuccessful Is Not That Of The Man Who Is Taken Unprepared, But Of Him Who Has Prepared And Is Never Taken.

It Is Easy To Face Death And Fate, And The Things That Sound So Dreadful. It Is On My Muddles That I Look Back With Horror--on Thethings That I Might Have Avoided.

Sudden Conversion ... Is Particularly Attractive To The Half-baked Mind.

I Have No Mystic Faith In The People. I Have In The Individual.

Sex Begins Before Adolescence, And Survives Sterility; It Is Indeed Coeval With Our Lives, Although At The Mating Age Its Effects Are More Obvious To Society.

Our Life On Earth Is, And Ought To Be, Material And Carnal. But We Have Not Yet Learned To Manage Our Materialism And Carnality Properly; They Are Still Entangled With The Desire For Ownership.

A Novel Is Based On Evidence, + Or -x, The Unknown Quantity Being The Temperament Of The Novelist, And The Unknown Quantity Always Modifies The Effect Of The Evidence, And Sometimes Transforms It Entirely.

Democracy Is Not A Beloved Republic Really, And Never Will Be. But It Is Less Hateful Than Other Contemporary Forms Of Government, And To That Extent Deserves Our Support.

A Mirror Does Not Develop Because An Historical Pageant Passes In Front Of It. It Only Develops When It Gets A Fresh Coat Of Quicksilver In Other Words, When It Acquires New Sensitiveness; And The Novel's Success Lies In Its Own Sensitiveness, Not In The Success Of Its Subject Matter.

Life's Very Difficult And Full Of Surprises. At All Events, I've Got As Far As That. To Be Humble And Kind, To Go Straight Ahead, To Love People Rather Than Pity Them, To Remember The Submerged - Well, One Can't Do All These Things At Once, Worse Luck, Because They're So Contradictory. It's Then That Proportion Comes In - To Live By Proportion. Don't Begin With Proportion. Only Prigs Do That. Let Proportion Come In As A Last Resource, When The Better Things Have Failed.

When Love Flies It Is Remembered Not As Love But As Something Else.

Ah, But You See, I Didn't Want To Be Fair.

Italy And London Are The Only Places Where I Don't Feel To Exist On Sufferance.

While Her Lips Talked Culture, Her Heart Was Planning To Invite Him To Tea

Only A Writer Who Has The Sense Of Evil Can Make Goodness Readable.

I Love Love I Love Being In Love I Don't Care What It Does To Me The Format, In "inches And Failing". Masood, A Young Lady Has Fallen In Love With Me-at Least So I Judge From Her Letters. Awkward Is It Not-awkward And Surprising. You Would Be Flattered And Twirl Your Moustache, But I Am Merely Uncomfortable. I Wish She Would Stop, As She Is Very Nice, And I Enjoyed Being Friends. What An Ill Constructed World This Is! Love Is Always Being Given Where It Is Not Required.

In Europe Life Retreats Out Of The Cold, And Exquisite Fireside Myths Have Resulted—balder, Persephone—but [in India] The Retreat Is From The Source Of Life, The Treacherous Sun, And No Poetry Adorns It Because Disillusionment Cannot Be Beautiful. Men Yearn For Poetry Though They May Not Confess It; They Desire That Joy Shall Be Graceful And Sorrow August And Infinity Have A Form, And India Fails To Accommodate Them.

My Law-givers Are Erasmus And Montaigne, Not Moses And St Paul.

It Is Obvious Enough For The Reader To Conclude, "she Loves Young Emerson." A Reader In Lucy's Place Would Not Find It Obvious. Life Is Easy To Chronicle, But Bewildering To Practice, And We Welcome "nerves" Or Any Other Shibboleth That Will Cloak Our Personal Desire. She Loved Cecil; George Made Her Nervous; Will The Reader Explain To Her That The Phrases Should Have Been Reversed?

Let Us Think Of People As Starting Life With An Experience They Forget And Ending It With One Which They Anticipate But Cannot Understand.

It Is Not That The Englishman Can't Feel-it Is That He Is Afraid To Feel. He Has Been Taught At His Public School That Feeling Is Bad Form. He Must Not Express Great Joy Or Sorrow, Or Even Open His Mouth Too Wide When He Talks-his Pipe Might Fall Out If He Did.

Reverence Is Fatal To Literature.

Humility Is A Quality For Which I Have Only A Limited Admiration. In Many Phases Of Life It Is A Great Mistake And Degenerates Into Defensiveness Or Hypocrisy.

A Happy Ending Was Imperative. I Shouldn't Have Bothered To Write Otherwise. I Was Determined That In Fiction Anyway Two Men Should Fall In Love And Remain In It For The Ever And Ever That Fiction Allows, And In This Sense, Maurice And Alec Still Roam The Greenwood.

Falling In Love

Think Before You Speak Is Criticism's Motto; Speak Before You Think, Creation's.

They Go Forth [into The World] With Well-developed Bodies, Fairly Developed Minds And Undeveloped Hearts. An Undeveloped Heart - Not A Cold One. The Difference Is Important.

There Are Occasions When I Would Rather Feel Like A Fly Than A Spider.

Those Who Search For Truth Are Too Conscious Of The Maze To Be Hard On Others...

There Is An Aristocracy Of The Sensitive. They Represent The True Human Tradition Of Permanent Victory Over Cruelty And Chaos.

You Talk As If A God Had Made The Machine," Cried The Other. "i Believe That You Pray To It When You Are Unhappy. Men Made It, Do Not Forget That. Great Men, But Men. The Machine Is Much, But Not Everything.

Money Pads The Edges Of Things.

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