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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.

-E. M. Forster

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I Have Said That

E. M. Forster

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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.

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One's Favorite Book Is As Elusive As One's Favorite Pudding.

The Book [ A Passage To India ] Shows Signs Of Fatigue And Disillusionment; But It Has Chapters Of Clear And Triumphant Beauty, And Above All It Makes Us Wonder, What Will He Write Next?

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

If Only The Sense Of Actuality Can Be Lulled-and It Sleeps For Ever In Most Historians-there Is No Passion That Cannot Be Gratified In The Past.

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.

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.

Life Is Easy To Chronicle, But Bewildering To Practice.

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.

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

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.

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

How Few Writers Can Prostitute All Their Powers!

But It Struck Him That People Are Not Really Dead Until They Are Felt To Be Dead. As Long As There Is Some Misunderstanding About Them, They Possess A Sort Of Immortality.

There Is Fascism, Leading Only Into The Blackness Which It Has Chosen As Its Symbol, Into Smartness And Yapping Out Of Orders, And Self-righteous Brutality, Into Social As Well As International War. It Means Change Without Hope. Our Immediate Duty - In That Tinkering Which Is The Only Useful Form Of Action In Our Leaky Old Tub - Our Immediate Duty Is To Stop It.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

It Is The Vice Of A Vulgar Mind To Be Thrilled By Bigness.

They Had Nothing In Common But The English Language.

English Language

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.

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.

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

Italy Is Such A Delightful Place To Live In If You Happen To Be A Man. There One May Enjoy That Exquisite Luxury Of Socialism--that True Socialism Which Is Based Not On Equality Of Income Or Character, But On The Equality Of Manners. In The Democracy Of The Caffè Or The Street The Great Question Of Our Life Has Been Solved, And The Brotherhood Of Man Is A Reality. But It Is Accomplished At The Expense Of The Sisterhood Of Women.

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

'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.'

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.

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.

I Do Not Believe In Belief.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Though Life Is Very Glorious, It Is Difficult.

Lord I Disbelieve - Help Thou My Unbelief.

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

Only People Who Have Been Allowed To Practise Freedom Can Have The Grown-up Look In Their Eyes.

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

We May Divide Characters Into Flat And Round.

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.

Very Notable Was His Distinction Between Coarseness And Vulgarity, Coarseness, Revealing Something; Vulgarity, Concealing Something.

Revealing Something

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.

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

The People I Respect Most Behave As If They Were Immortal And As If Society Was Eternal.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

He Had Shown Her All The Workings Of His Soul, Mistaking This For Love.

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.

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.

George Had Turned At The Sound Of Her Arrival. For A Moment He Contemplated Her, As One Who Had Fallen Out Of Heaven. He Saw Radiant Joy In Her Face, He Saw The Flowers Beat Against Her Dress In Blue Waves. The Bushes Above Them Closed. He Stepped Quickly Forward And Kissed Her. Before She Could Speak, Almost Before She Could Feel, A Voice Called 'lucy! Lucy! Lucy!' The Silence Of Life Had Been Broken By Miss Bartlett, Who Stood Brown Against The View.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Tolerance Is A Very Dull Virtue. It Is Boring. Unlike Love, It Has Always Had A Bad Press. It Is Negative. It Merely Means Putting Up With People, Being Able To Stand Things.

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

The Test Of A Round Character Is Whether It Is Capable Of Surprising In A Convincing Way. If It Never Surprises It Is Flat. Flat Characters ... In Their Purest Form ... Are Constructed Round A Single Idea Or Quality; When There Is More Than One Factor To Them, We Get The Beginning Of The Curve Toward The Round. The Really Flat Character Can Be Experessed In One Sentence Such As, "i Will Never Desert Mr Micawber." There Is Mrs Micawber - She Says She Won't Desert Mr Micawber; She Doesn't, And There She Is.

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

Why Children?' He Asked. 'why Always Children? For Love To End Where It Begins Is Far More Beautiful, And Nature Knows It.

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

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

Most Of Life Is So Dull That There Is Nothing To Be Said About It, And The Books And Talk That Would Describe It As Interesting Are Obliged To Exaggerate, In The Hope Of Justifying Their Own Existence.

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

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

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

Only A Struggle Twists Sentimentality And Lust Together Into Love.

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Tolerance Is Just A Makeshift, Suitable For An Overcrowded And Overheated Planet. It Carries On When Love Gives Out, And Love Generally Gives Out As Soon As We Move Away From Our Home And Our Friends.

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.

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

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

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.

The Historian Records, But The Novelist Creates.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

She Loved Him Absolutely, Perhaps For Half An Hour.

Be Soft, Even If You Stand To Get Squashed.

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

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.

But The Body Is Deeper Than The Soul And Its Secrets Inscrutable.

I Believe We Shall Come To Care About People Less And Less, Helen. The More People One Knows, The Easier It Becomes To Replace Them. It's One Of The Curses Of London. I Quite Expect To End My Life Caring Most For A Place.

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

You Do Care A Little For Me, I Know... But Nothing To Speak Of, And You Don't Love Me. I Was Yours Once Till Death If You'd Cared To Keep Me, But I'm Someone Else's Now... And He's Mine In A Way That Shocks You, But Why Don't You Stop Being Shocked, And Attend To Your Own Happiness.

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.

Are Not Beauty And Delicacy The Same?

Room With A View

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.

Chess Is A Forcing House Where The Fruits Of Character Can Ripen More Fully Than In Life

I Think You’re Beautiful, The Only Beautiful Person I’ve Ever Seen. I Love Your Voice And Everything To Do With You, Down To Your Clothes Or The Room You Are Sitting In. I Adore You.

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

Works Of Art, In My Opinion, Are The Only Objects In The Material Universe To Possess Internal Order, And That Is Why, Though I Don't Believe That Only Art Matters, I Do Believe In Art For Art's Sake.

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

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

I Am An Unspeakable Of The Oscar Wilde Sort.

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.

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

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.

The More Highly Public Life Is Organized The Lower Does Its Morality Sink.

All A Child's Life Depends On The Ideal It Has Of Its Parents. Destroy That And Everything Goes — Morals, Behaviour, Everything. Absolute Trust In Some One Else Is The Essence Of Education.

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

Only Connect The Prose And The Passion, And Both Will Be Exalted, And Human Love Will Be Seen At Its Highest. Live In Fragments No Longer

He Stretched Out His Hands As He Sang, Sadly, Because All Beauty Is Sad…the Poem Had Done No ‘good’ To Anyone, But It Was A Passing Reminder, A Breath From The Divine Lips Of Beauty, A Nightingale Between Two Worlds Of Dust. Less Explicit Than The Call To Krishna, It Voiced Our Loneliness Nevertheless, Our Isolation, Our Need For The Friend Who Never Comes Yet Is Not Entirely Disproved.

Ideas Are Fatal To Caste.

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.

The Kingdom Of Music Is Not The Kingdom Of This World; It Will Accept Those Whom Breeding And Intellect And Culture Have Alike Rejected. The Commonplace Person Begins To Play, And Shoots Into The Empyrean Without Effort, Whilst We Look Up, Marvelling How He Has Escaped Us, And Thinking How We Could Worship Him And Love Him, Would He But Translate His Visions Into Human Words, And His Experiences Into Human Actions. Perhaps He Cannot; Certainly He Does Not, Or Does So Very Seldom.

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.

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.

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

Railway Termini Are Our Gates To The Glorious And The Unknown

Passion Should Believe Itself Irresistible. It Should Forget Civility And 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.

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.

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.

I'm A Holy Man Minus The Holiness.

Don't Go Fighting Against The Spring.

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

Room With A View

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

Creative Writers Are Always Greater Than The Causes That They Represent.

A Critic Has No Right To The Narrowness Which Is The Frequent Prerogative Of The Creative Artist.

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

It Isn't Possible To Love And To Part.

Room With A View

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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!

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.

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

Love And Understand The Italians, For The People Are More Marvellous Than The Land.

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 . . . .

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Truth Is A Flower In Whose Neighbourhood Others Must Wither.

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.

English Literature Is A Flying Fish.

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

Finding Happiness

There Is Something Majestic In The Bad Taste Of Italy.

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

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

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.

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

Neanderthal Man Listened To Stories, If One May Judge By The Shape Of His Skull. The Primitive Audience Was An Audience Of Shock-heads, Gaping Around The Camp-fire, Fatigued With Contending Against The Mammoth Or Wooly-rhinoceros, And Only Kept Awake By Suspense. What Would Happen Next? The Novelist Droned On, And As Soon As The Audience Guessed What Happened Next, They Either Fell Asleep Or Killed Him.

The Woman Who Can't Influence Her Husband To Vote The Way She Wants Ought To Be Ashamed Of Herself.

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

Nonsense And Beauty Have Close Connections.

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

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

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

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. . .

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

Personal Relationships

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.

A Sentence Begins Quite Simply, Then It Undulates And Expands, Parentheses Intervene Like Quick-set Hedges, The Flowers Of Comparison Bloom, And Three Fields Off, Like A Wounded Partridge, Crouches The Principal Verb, Making One Wonder As One Picks It Up, Poor Little Thing, Whether After All It Was Worth Such A Tramp, So Many Guns, And Such Expensive Dogs, And What, After All, Is Its Relation To The Main Subject, Potted So Gaily Half A Page Back, And Proving Finally To Have Been In The Accusative Case.

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.

Human Beings Have Their Great Chance In The Novel.

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