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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.

-E. M. Forster

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I Am So Used

E. M. Forster

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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.

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We Are Not Concerned With The Very Poor. They Are Unthinkable, And Only To Be Approached By The Statistician Or The Poet.

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.

I Really Don't Know What Happens Next -- One So Seldom Does.

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.

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.

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

Pity Wraps The Student Of The Past In An Ambrosial Cloud, And Washes His Limbs With Eternal Youth.

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?

There Lies At The Back Of Every Creed Something Terrible And Hard For Which The Worshipper May One Day Be Required To Suffer.

I Am A Jane Austenite, And Therefore Slightly Imbecile About Jane Austen. My Fatuous Expression, And Airs Of Personal Immunity-how Ill They Sit On The Face, Say,of A Stevensonian! But Jane Austen Is So Different. She Is My Favourite Author! I Read And Reread, The Mouth Open And The Mind Closed. Shut Up In Measureless Content, I Greet Her By The Name Of Most Kind Hostess, While Criticism Slumbers.

One Always Tends To Overpraise A Long Book, Because One Has Got Through It.

Nature Pulls One Way And Human Nature Another.

I Do Not Believe In Belief.

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.

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

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.

It Is Devilish Difficult To Criticise Society & Also Create Human Beings.

When We Were Only Acquaintances, You Let Me Be Myself, But Now You're Always Protecting Me... 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 Face The Truth But I Must Get It Second-hand Through You? A Woman's Place!

'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.'

God Is Not Love In The East. He Is Power, Although Mercy May Temper 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.

For A Wonderful Physical Tie Binds The Parents To The Children; And - By Some Sad, Strange Irony - It Does Not Bind Us Children To Our Parents. For If It Did, If We Could Answer Their Love Not With Gratitude But With Equal Love, Life Would Lose Much Of Its Pathos And Much Of Its Squalor, And We Might Be Wonderfully Happy.

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

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.

She Loved Him Absolutely, Perhaps For Half An Hour.

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.

He Was Obliged However To Throw Over Christianity. Those Who Base Their Conduct Upon What They Are Rather Than Upon What They Ought To Be, Always Must Throw It Over In The End . . . .

I Have Almost Completed A Long Novel, But It Is Unpublishable Until My Death And England's.

Beethoven's Fifth Symphony Is The Most Sublime Noise That Has Ever Penetrated Into The Ear Of Man.

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.

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

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

The Businessman Who Assumes That His Life Is Everything, And The Mystic Who Asserts That It Is Nothing, Fail, On This Side And On That, To Hit The Truth. ‘yes, I See, Dear; It’s About Half-way Between,’ Aunt Juley Had Hazarded In Earlier Years. No; Truth, Being Alive, Was Not Halfway Between Anything. It Was Only To Be Found By Continuous Excursions Into Either Realm, And Though Proportion Is The Final Secret, To Espouse It At The Outset Is To Ensure Sterility.

Mistrust All Enterprises That Require New Clothes.

Science Is Better Than Sympathy, If Only It Is Science.

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

Room With A View

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

We May Divide Characters Into Flat And Round.

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.

It Isn't Possible To Love And To Part.

Room With A View

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

She Had Been So Wicked That In All Her Life She Had Done Only One Good Deed-given An Onion To A Beggar. So She Went To Hell. As She Lay In Torment She Saw The Onion, Lowered Down From Heaven By An Angel. She Caught Hold Of It. He Began To Pull Her Up. The Other Damned Saw What Was Happening And Caught Hold Of It Too. She Was Indignant And Cried, "let Go-it's My Onion," And As Soon As She Said, "my Onion," The Stalk Broke And She Fell Back Into The Flames.

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

Ulysses ... Is A Dogged Attempt To Cover The Universe With Mud, An Inverted Victorianism, An Attempt To Make Crossness And Dirt Succeed Where Sweetness And Light Failed, A Simplification Of The Human Character In The Interests Of Hell.

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

Culture Had Worked In Her Own Case, But During The Last Few Weeks She Had Doubted Whether It Humanized The Majority, So Wide And So Widening Is The Gulf That Stretches Between The Natural And The Philosophic Man, So Many The Good Chaps Who Are Wrecked In Trying To Cross It.

She Must Be Assured That It Is Not A Criminal Offense To Love At First Sight.

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.

Without Form, The Sensitiveness Vanishes.

Truth Is A Flower In Whose Neighbourhood Others Must Wither.

History Develops, Art Stands Still.

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.

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

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.

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

If Human Nature Does Alter It Will Be Because Individuals Manage To Look At Themselves In A New Way. Here And There People - A Very Few People, But A Few Novelists Are Among Them - Are Trying To Do This. Every Institution And Vested Interest In Against Such A Search: Organized Religion, The State, The Family In Its Economic Aspect, Have Nothing To Gain, And It Is Only When Outward Prohibitions Weaken That It Can Proceed: History Conditions It To That Extent.

It Was Not That Ladies Were Inferior To Men; It Was That They Were Different. Their Mission Was To Inspire Others To Achievement Rather Than To Achieve Themselves. Indirectly, By Means Of Tact And A Spotless Name, A Lady Could Accomplish Much. But If She Rushed Into The Fray Herself She Would Be First Censured, Then Despised, And Finally Ignored.

Do Not Be Proud Of Your Inconsistency. It Is A Pity, It Is A Pity That We Should Be Equipped Like This. It Is A Pity That Man Cannot Be At The Same Time Impressive And Truthful.

It Was Pleasant To Wake Up In Florence, To Open The Eyes Upon A Bright Bare Room, With A Floor Of Red Tiles Which Look Clean Though They Are Not; With A Painted Ceiling Whereon Pink Griffins And Blue Amorini Sport In A Forest Of Yellow Violins And Bassoons. It Was Pleasant, Too, To Fling Wide The Windows, Pinching The Fingers In Unfamiliar Fastenings, To Lean Out Into Sunshine With Beautiful Hills And Trees And Marble Churches Opposite, And, Close Below, Arno, Gurgling Against The Embankment Of The Road.

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

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.

Even A Fellow With A Camera Has His Favourite Subjects, As We Can See Looking Through The Kodak-albums Of Our Friends. One Amateur Prefers The Family Group, Another Bathing Scenes, Another Cows Upon An Alp, Or Kittens Held Upside Down In The Arms Of A Black-faced Child. The Tendency To Choose One Subject Rather Than Another Indicates The Photographer's Temperament. Nevertheless, His Passion Is For Photography Rather Than For Selection, A Kitten Will Serve When No Cows Are Available.

Faith, To My Mind, Is A Stiffening Process, A Sort Of Mental Starch.

I Am An Unspeakable Of The Oscar Wilde Sort.

Adventures Do Occur, But Not Punctually.

I Have Always Found Writing Pleasant And Don't Understand What People Mean By 'throes Of Creation.'

I Seem Fated To Pass Through The World Without Colliding With It Or Moving It — And I'm Sure I Can't Tell You Whether The Fate's Good Or Evil. I Don't Die — I Don't Fall In Love. And If Other People Die Or Fall In Love They Always Do It When I'm Just Not There.

Falling In Love

The Germans Are Called Brutal, The Spanish Cruel, The Americans Superficial, And So On; But We Are Perfide Albion, The Island Of Hypocrites, The People Who Have Built Up An Empire With A Bible In One Hand, A Pistol In The Other, And Financial Concessions In Both Pockets. Is The Charge True? I Think It Is.

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.

English Literature Is A Flying Fish.

One Doesn't Come To Italy For Niceness," Was The Retort; "one Comes For Life. Buon Giorno! Buon Giorno!

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.

I Won't Be Protected. I Will Choose For Myself What Is Ladylike And Right. To Shield Me Is An Insult.

Room With A View

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

Let Her Go To Italy!" He Cried. "let Her Meddle With What She Doesn't Understand!

But I Have Seen My Obstacles: Trivialities, Learning And Poetry. This Last Needs Explaining: The Old Artist's Readiness To Dissolve Characters Into A Haze. Characters Cannot Come Alive And Fight And Guide The World Unless The Novelist Wants Them To Remain Characters.

Growing Old Is An Emotion Which Comes Over Us At Almost Any Age; I Had It Myself Between The Ages Of 25 And 30.

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.

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.

Reverence Is Fatal To Literature.

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

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?

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

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

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.

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

I Never Could Get On With Representative Individuals But People Who Existed On Their Own Account And With Whom It Might Therefore Be Possible To Be Friends.

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

Room With A View

There Was Something Better In Life Than This Rubbish, If Only He Could Get To It—love—nobility—big Spaces Where Passion Clasped Peace, Spaces No Science Could Reach, But They Existed For Ever, Full Of Woods Some Of Them, And Arched With Majestic Sky And A Friend. . .

In The Novel We Can Know People Perfectly, And, Apart From The General Pleasure Of Reading, We Can Find Here A Compensation For Their Dimness In Life.

It Is The Starved Imagination, Not The Well Nourished, That Is Afraid.

I Don't Think Literature Will Be Purged Until Its Philosophic Pretentiousness Is Extruded, And I Shant Live To See That Purge, Nor Perhaps When It Has Happened Will Anything Survive.

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

Money Pads The Edges Of Things.

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 King Died And Then The Queen Died Is A Story. The King Died, And Then Queen Died Of Grief Is A Plot.

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?

You Told Me Once That We Shall Be Judged By Our Intentions, Not By Our Accomplishments. I Thought It A Grand Remark. But We Must Intend To Accomplish - Not Sit Intending On A Chair.

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

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

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.

Outside The Arch, Always There Seemed Another Arch. And Beyond The Remotest Echo, A Silence.

Do You Remember Italy?

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

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.

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

This Element Of Surprise Or Mystery The Detective Element As It Is Sometimes Rather Emptily Called Is Of Great Importance In A Plot.

The People I Admire Most Are Those Who Are Sensitive And Want To Create Something Or Discover Something, And Do Not See Life In Terms Of Power.

You Want To Love Everyone Equally, And That's Worse Than Impossible--it's Wrong.

A Facade Of Skyscrapers Facing A Lake And Behind The Facade, Every Type Of Dubiousness.

But After All, What Have We To Do With Taverns? Real Menace Belongs To The Drawing-room.

Curiosity Is One Of The Lowest Of The Human Faculties. You Will Have Noticed In Daily Life That When People Are Inquisitive They Nearly Always Have Bad Memories And Are Usually Stupid At Bottom.

I Do Like Christmas On The Whole.... In Its Clumsy Way, It Does Approach Peace And Goodwill. But It Is Clumsier Every Year.

When That Strange Race Nears The Dust And Is Condemned As Untouchable, Then Nature Remembers The Physical Perfection That She Accomplished Elsewhere, And Throws Out A God-not Many, But One Here And There, To Prove To Society How Little Its Categories Impress Her.

One Must Be Fond Of People And Trust Them If One Is Not To Make A Mess Of Life.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Don't Go Fighting Against The Spring.

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

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.

One Of The Evils Of Money Is That It Tempts Us To Look At It Rather Than At The Things That It Buys.

The Sadness Of The Incomplete, The Sadness That Is Often Life, But Should Never Be Art.

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

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.

He Built Up A Situation That Was Far Enough From The Truth. It Never Occurred To Him That Helen Was To Blame. He Forgot The Intensity Of Their Talk, The Charm That Had Been Lent Him By Sincerity, The Magic Of Oniton Under Darkness And Of The Whispering River. Helen Loved The Absolute. Leonard Had Been Ruined Absolutely, And Had Appeared To Her As A Man Apart, Isolated From The World. A Real Man, Who Cared For Adventure And Beauty, Who Desired To Live Decently And Pay His Way, Who Could Have Travelled More Gloriously Through Life Than The Juggernaut Car That Was Crushing Him.

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

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.

England Has Always Been Disinclined To Accept Human Nature.

I'm A Holy Man Minus The Holiness.

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

The Historian Records, But The Novelist Creates.

Some Reviews Give Pain. This Is Regrettable, But No Author Has The Right To Whine. He Was Not Obliged To Be An Author. He Invited Publicity, And He Must Take The Publicity That Comes Along.

A Work Of Art Is Never Finished. It Is Merely Abandoned.

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

Personal Relationships

If We Act The Truth The People Who Really Love Us Are Sure To Come Back To Us In The Long Run

The Strong Are So Stupid.

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

'oh, Poor, Poor Fellow!' Said Mrs. Elliot With A Remorse That Was Sincere, Though Her Congratulations Would Not Have Been.

Congratulations

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

The Present Flowed By Them Like A Stream. The Tree Rustled. It Had Made Music Before They Were Born, And Would Continue After Their Deaths, But Its Song Was Of The Moment. The Moment Had Passed. The Tree Rustled Again. Their Senses Were Sharpened, And They Seemed To Apprehend Life. Life Passed. The Tree Rustled Again.

Happiness In The Ordinary Sense Is Not What One Needs In Life, Though One Is Right To Aim At It. The True Satisfaction Is To Come Through, And See Those Whom One Lives Come Through.

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

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.

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.

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

Men Were Not Gods After All, But As Human And As Clumsy As Girls.

Room With A View

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

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.

One Marvels Why The Middle Classes Still Insist On So Much Discomfort For Their Children At Such Expense To Themselves.

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.

Lord I Disbelieve - Help Thou My Unbelief.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

It Is My Fate And Perhaps My Temperament To Sign Agreements With Fools.

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.

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

No One Is More Triumphant Than The Man Who Chooses A Worthy Subject And Masters All Its Facts.

How Few Writers Can Prostitute All Their Powers!

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

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.

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

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.

How Do I Know What I Have To Say Wntil I See What I Have Said?

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

To Trust People Is A Luxury In Which Only The Wealthy Can Indulge; The Poor Cannot Afford It.

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.

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

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.

Only A Struggle Twists Sentimentality And Lust Together Into Love.

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.

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

Art For Art's Sake? I Should Think So, And More So Than Ever At The Present Time. It Is The One Orderly Product Which Our Middling Race Has Produced. It Is The Cry Of A Thousand Sentinels, The Echo From A Thousand Labyrinths, It Is The Lighthouse Which Cannot Be Hidden. It Is The Best Evidence We Can Have Of Our Dignity.

He Had Known So Much About Her Once -what She Thought, How She Felt, The Reasons For Her Actions. And Now He Only Knew That He Loved Her, And All The Other Knowledge Seemed Passing From Him Just As He Needed It Most.

It Is Impossible To Foretell The Future With Any Degree Of Accuracy, That It Is Impossible To Rehearse Life. A Fault In The Scenery, A Face In The Audience, An Interruption Of The Audience On To The Stage, And All Our Carefully Planned Gesture Mean Nothing, Or Mean Too Much.

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.

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.

Before The Civil War, Pottibakia Was A Normal Member Of The Comity Of Nations. She Erected Tariff Walls, Broke Treaties, Persecuted Minorities, Obstructed At Conferences Unless She Was Convinced There Was No Danger Of A Satisfactory Solution; Then She Strained Every Nerve In The Cause Of Peace.

[...] It Is Right To Be Kind And Even Sacrifice Ourselves To People Who Need Kindness And Lie In Our Way - Otherwise, Besides Failing To Help Them, We Run Into The Aridity Of Self-development. To Seek For Recipients Of One's Goodness, To Play The Potted Jesus Leads To The Contray The Christian Danger.

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

She Stopped And Leant Her Elbows Against The Parapet Of The Embankment. He Did Likewise. There Is At Times A Magic In Identity Of Position; It Is One Of The Things That Have Suggested To Us Eternal Comradeship.

The Novel Is A Formidable Mass, And It Is So Amorphous - No Mountain In It To Climb, No Parnassus Or Helicon, Not Even A Pisgah. It Is Most Distinctly One Of The Moister Areas Of Literature - Irrigated By A Hundred Rills And Occasionally Degenerating Into A Swamp. I Do Not Wonder That The Poets Despise It, Though They Sometimes Find Themselves In It By Accident. And I Am Not Surprised At The Annoyance Of The Historians When By Accident It Finds Itself Among Them.

The Advance Of Regret Can Be So Gradual That It Is Impossible To Say "yesterday I Was Happy, Today I Am Not.

But Why I Cry Out Against Rubens Is Because He Painted Undressed People Instead Of Naked Ones.

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.

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.

Are Not Beauty And Delicacy The Same?

Room With A View

There Has Been, Is, And Always Will Be Every Conceivable Type Of Person.

No Man Can Be An Agnostic Who Has A Sense Of Humour.

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

If There Is On Earth A House With Many Mansions, It Is The House Of Words.

Freedom Does Not Guarantee Masterpieces.

Life Never Gives Us What We Want At The Moment That We Consider Appropriate.

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