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I Only Wish The Poets Would Say This Too: Love Is Of The Body; Not The Body, But Of The The Body. Ah! The Misery That Would Be Saved If We Confessed That! Ah! For A Little Directness To Liberate The Soul!

-E. M. Forster

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I Only Wish The

E. M. Forster

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I Only Wish The Poets Would Say This Too: Love Is Of The Body; Not The Body, But Of The The Body. Ah! The Misery That Would Be Saved If We Confessed That! Ah! For A Little Directness To Liberate The Soul!

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

When I Think Of What Life Is, And How Seldom Love Is Answered By Love; It Is One Of The Moments For Which The World Was Made.

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.

I Am Certainly An Ought And Not A Must.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

All This Fame And Money, Which Have So Thrilled Me When They Came To Others, Leave Me Cold When They Come To Me. I Am Not An Ascetic, But I Don't Know What To Do With Them, And My Daily Life Has Never Been So Trying, And There Is No One To Fill It Emotionally.

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

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

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

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

Truth Is A Flower In Whose Neighbourhood Others Must Wither.

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.

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

Democracies Have

Life Is Easy To Chronicle, But Bewildering To Practice.

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

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.

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.

I Am An Unspeakable Of The Oscar Wilde Sort.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

There Is Much Good Luck In The World, But It Is Luck. We Are None Of Us Safe. We Are Children, Playing Or Quarrelling On The Line.

The Only Books That Influence Us Are Those For Which We Are Ready, And Which Have Gone A Little Farther Down Our Particular Path Than We Have Yet Got Ourselves.

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

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.

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.

The Novelist, Unlike Many Of His Colleagues, Makes Up A Number Of Word-masses Roughly Describing Himself (roughly: Niceties Shallcome Later), Gives Them Names And Sex, Assigns Them Plausible Gestures, And Causes Them To Speak By The Use Of Inverted Commas, And Perhaps To Behave Consistently.

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.

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 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.'

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

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

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.

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?

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.

It Is Pleasant To Be Transferred From An Office Where One Is Afraid Of A Sergeant-major Into An Office Where One Can Intimidate Generals, And Perhaps This Is Why History Is So Attractive To The More Timid Among Us. We Can Recover Self-confidence By Snubbing The Dead.

Self Confidence

Mistrust All Enterprises That Require New Clothes.

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.

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

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

The People I Respect Most Behave As If They Were Immortal And As If Society Was Eternal. Both Assumptions Are False: Both Of Them Must Be Accepted As True If We Are To Go On Eating And Working And Loving, And Are To Keep Open A Few Breathing Holes For The Human Spirit.

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

The Main Facts In Human Life Are Five: Birth, Food, Sleep, Love And Death.

I Don't Know What To Think Until I See What I've Said.

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

Room With A View

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.

Do You Remember Italy?

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

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

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.

We May Divide Characters Into Flat And Round.

Liking One Person Is An Extra Reason For Liking Another.

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.

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

England Has Always Been Disinclined To Accept Human Nature.

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

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

Personal Relationships

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

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

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

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.

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.

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. . .

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.

Science Explained People, But Could Not Understand Them. After Long Centuries Among The Bones And Muscles It Might Be Advancing To Knowledge Of The Nerves, But This Would Never Give Understanding

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

Room With A View

Are Not Beauty And Delicacy The Same?

Room With A View

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.

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.

... There Are Shadows Because There Are Hills.

Room With A View

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

The Armour Of Falsehood Is Subtly Wrought Out Of Darkness, And Hides A Man Not Only From Others, But From His Own Soul.

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

I Only Wish The Poets Would Say This Too: Love Is Of The Body; Not The Body, But Of The The Body. Ah! The Misery That Would Be Saved If We Confessed That! Ah! For A Little Directness To Liberate The Soul!

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

Revealing Something

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Room With A View

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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

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

I Can Only Do What's Easy. I Can Only Entice And Be Enticed. I Can't, And Won't, Attempt Difficult Relations. If I Marry It Will Either Be A Man Who's Strong Enough To Boss Me Or Whom I'm Strong Enough To Boss. So I Shan't Ever Marry, For There Aren't Such Men. And Heaven Help Any One Whom I Do Marry, For I Shall Certainly Run Away From Him Before You Can Say 'jack Robinson.

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

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.

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.

[...] 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.

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.

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

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.

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

Adventures Do Occur, But Not Punctually.

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

Freedom Does Not Guarantee Masterpieces.

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.

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

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

“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

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

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.

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

Paganism Is Infectious, More Infectious Than Diphtheria Or Piety.

It Isn't Possible To Love And To Part.

Room With A View

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.

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.

Without Form, The Sensitiveness Vanishes.

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

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

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

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.

There Are Moments When The Inner Life Actually 'pays,' When Years Of Self-scrutiny, Conducted For No Ulterior Motive, Are Suddenly Of Practical Use.

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.

Though Life Is Very Glorious, It Is Difficult.

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.

But This Time I'm Not To Blame; I Want You To Believe That. I Simply Slipped Into Those Violets. No, I Want To Be Really Truthful. I Am A Little To Blame. The Sky, You Know, Was Gold, And The Ground All Blue, And For A Moment He Looked Like Some One In A Book.

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

They Had Nothing In Common But The English Language.

English Language

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

The Historian Records, But The Novelist Creates.

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

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

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.

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

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.

As Long As Learning Is Connected With Earning, As Long As Certain Jobs Can Only Be Reached Through Exams, So Long Must We Take The Examination System Seriously. If Another Ladder To Employment Was Contrived, Much So-called Education Would Disappear, And No One Be A Penny The Stupider.

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

I'm A Holy Man Minus The Holiness.

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

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

The Strong Are So Stupid.

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

How Few Writers Can Prostitute All Their Powers!

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

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.

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

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

Words Deserted Him Immediately. He Could Only Speak When He Was Not Asked To.

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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