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

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

Understanding the Quote: "let us think of people as starting life with an experience they..."

This quote by E. M. Forster reflects deeply on the theme of thinking. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Thinking, People, Forget, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how E. M. Forster interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About E. M. Forster

E. M. Forster is celebrated for insightful thoughts on thinking and people. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Thinking
People
Forget
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Very Notable Was His Distinction Between Coarseness And Vulgarity, Coarseness, Revealing Something; Vulgarity, Concealing Something.
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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.
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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.
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The Sadness Of The Incomplete, The Sadness That Is Often Life, But Should Never Be Art.
Art
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Science, When Applied To Personal Relationships, Is Always Just Wrong .
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The Strong Are So Stupid.
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Pathos, Piety, Courage, They Exist, But Are Identical, And So Is Filth. Everything Exists, Nothing Has Value.
Filth
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But After All, What Have We To Do With Taverns? Real Menace Belongs To The Drawing-room.
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If Miss Honeychurch Ever Takes To Live As She Plays, It Will Be Very Exciting--both For Us And For Her.
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It Is Devilish Difficult To Criticise Society & Also Create Human Beings.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Human Beings Have Their Great Chance In The Novel.
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You Want To Love Everyone Equally, And That's Worse Than Impossible--it's Wrong.
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Life Is Easy To Chronicle, But Bewildering To Practice.
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God Is Not Love In The East. He Is Power, Although Mercy May Temper It.
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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.
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For It Is A Serious Thing To Have Been Watched. We All Radiate Something Curiously Intimate When We Believe Ourselves To Be Alone.
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Only A Struggle Twists Sentimentality And Lust Together Into Love.
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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.
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Neanderthal Man Listened To Stories, If One May Judge By The Shape Of His Skull.
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Solidity, Caution, Integrity, Efficiency. Lack Of Imagination, Hypocrisy. These Qualities Characterize The Middle Classes In Everycountry, But In England They Are National Characteristics.
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The Sun Was Already Declining And Each Of The Trees Held A Premonition Of Night.
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[...] 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.
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Railway Termini Are Our Gates To The Glorious And The Unknown
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We Must Be Willing To Let Go Of The Life We Have Planned, So As To Have The Life That Is Waiting For Us.
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People Have Their Own Deaths As Well As Their Own Lives, And Even If There Is Nothing Beyond Death, We Shall Differ In Our Nothingness.
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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.
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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
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Some Leave Our Life With Tears, Others With An Insane Frigidity; Mrs. Wilcox Had Taken The Middle Course, Which Only Rarer Natures Can Pursue. She Had Kept Proportion. She Had Told A Little Of Her Grim Secret To Her Friends, But Not Too Much; She Had Shut Up Her Heart--almost, But Not Entirely. It Is Thus, If There Is Any Rule, That We Ought To Die--neither As Victim Nor As Fanatic, But As The Seafarer Who Can Greet With An Equal Eye The Deep That He Is Entering, And The Shore That He Must Leave.
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At Night, When The Curtains Are Drawn And The Fire Flickers, My Books Attain A Collective Dignity.
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The Woman Who Can't Influence Her Husband To Vote The Way She Wants Ought To Be Ashamed Of Herself.
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Suspense: The Only Literary Tool That Has Any Effect Upon Tyrants And Savages.
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Though Life Is Very Glorious, It Is Difficult.
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So, Two Cheers For Democracy: One Because It Admits Variety And Two Because It Permits Criticism.
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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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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.
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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.
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Ideas Are Fatal To Caste.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Truth Is A Flower In Whose Neighbourhood Others Must Wither.
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Love Is Always Being Given Where It Is Not Required.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Without Form, The Sensitiveness Vanishes.
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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.
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I Have Almost Completed A Long Novel, But It Is Unpublishable Until My Death And England's.
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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.
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The Main Facts In Human Life Are Five: Birth, Food, Sleep, Love And Death.
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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.
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Sex Begins Before Adolescence, And Survives Sterility; It Is Indeed Coeval With Our Lives, Although At The Mating Age Its Effects Are More Obvious To Society.
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This Desire To Govern A Woman -- It Lies Very Deep, And Men And Women Must Fight It Together.... But I Do Love You Surely In A Better Way Then He Does." He Thought. "yes -- Really In A Better Way. I Want You To Have Your Own Thoughts Even When I Hold You In My Arms.
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Our Easiest Approach To A Definition Of Any Aspect Of Fiction Is Always By Considering The Sort Of Demand It Makes On The Reader. Curiosity For The Story, Human Feelings And A Sense Of Value For The Characters, Intelligence And Memory For The Plot. What Does Fantasy Ask Of Us? It Asks Us To Pay Something Extra.
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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.
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If There Is On Earth A House With Many Mansions, It Is The House Of Words.
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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.
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People In A Novel Can Be Understood Completely By The Reader, If The Novelist Can Be Understood Completely By The Reader, If The Novelist Wishes; Their Inner As Well As Their Outer Life Can Be Exposed.
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This Solitude Opressed Her; She Was Accustomed To Have Her Thoughts Confirmed By Others Or, At All Events, Contradicted; It Was Too Dreadful Not To Know Whether She Was Thinking Right Or Wrong.
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I Am An Unspeakable Of The Oscar Wilde Sort.
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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.
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Adventures Do Occur, But Not Punctually.
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Muddle
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.
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Mind
One Person With Passion Is Better Than Forty People Merely Interested.
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Passion
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.
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Ordinary
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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.
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Heaven
How Few Writers Can Prostitute All Their Powers!
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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If We Act The Truth The People Who Really Love Us Are Sure To Come Back To Us In The Long Run
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Long
People
The King Died And Then The Queen Died Is A Story. The King Died, And Then Queen Died Of Grief Is A Plot.
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Queens
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But Nothing In India Is Identifiable, The Mere Asking Of A Question Causes It To Disappear Or To Merge In Something Else.
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Asking
Literature
Men Were Not Gods After All, But As Human And As Clumsy As Girls.
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Room With A View
I Think - I Think - I Think How Little They Think What Lies So Near Them.
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Thinking
Littles
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.
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Skulls
Money Pads The Edges Of Things.
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Life Never Gives Us What We Want At The Moment That We Consider Appropriate.
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Want
Science Is Better Than Sympathy, If Only It Is Science.
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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.
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Eye
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.
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Literature
Objects
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.
Book
Interesting
Literature
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.
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Entering
Victim
Italy And London Are The Only Places Where I Don't Feel To Exist On Sufferance.
London
Feels
I'm A Holy Man Minus The Holiness.
Men
Literature
Holiness
Only People Who Have Been Allowed To Practise Freedom Can Have The Grown-up Look In Their Eyes.
Eye
People
Looks
One Can Run Away From Women, Turn Them Out, Or Give In To Them. No Fourth Course.
Running
Giving
Turns
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.
Time
Novelists
Stories
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.
Heart
Men
Way
A Facade Of Skyscrapers Facing A Lake And Behind The Facade, Every Type Of Dubiousness.
Lakes
Cities
Chicago
...the True Spirit Of Gastronomic Joylessness. Porridge Fills The Englishman Up, And Prunes Clear Him Out.
Food
Cooking
Spirit
Logic! Good Gracious! What Rubbish!
Rubbish
Literature
Logic
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.
Inspirational
Life
Beautiful
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.
Real
Heart
Enemy
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.
Passion
Sleep
Past
A Novel Must Give A Sense Of Permanence As Well As A Sense Of Life.
Writing
Giving
Novel
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.
Mean
Degrees
Gestures
One Has Two Duties - To Be Worried And Not To Be Worried.
Life
Two
Worried
Surely The Only Sound Foundation For A Civilization Is A Sound State Of Mind.
Civilization
Mind
Foundation
There Lies At The Back Of Every Creed Something Terrible And Hard For Which The Worshipper May One Day Be Required To Suffer.
Lying
Suffering
Atheism
It Isn't Possible To Love And To Part.
Romantic
Possible Love
Room With A View
The Four Characteristics Of Humanism Are Curiosity, A Free Mind, Belief In Good Taste, And Belief In The Human Race.
Race
Curiosity
Mind
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.
Flower
Blue
Views
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.
Men
Blue
Sky
Expansion, That Is The Idea The Novelist Must Cling To, Not Completion, Not Rounding Off, But Opening Out.
Writing
Ideas
Novelists
It Was Unbearable, And He Thought Again, 'how Unhappy I Am!' And Became Happier.
Unhappy
Unbearable
This Element Of Surprise Or Mystery The Detective Element As It Is Sometimes Rather Emptily Called Is Of Great Importance In A Plot.
Plot
Elements
Detectives
A Novelist Can Shift View-point If It Comes Off. ... Indeed, This Power To Expand And Contract Perception (of Which The Shifting View-point Is A Symptom), This Right To Intermittent Knowledge - I Find One Of The Great Advantages Of The Novel-form ... This Intermittence Lends In The Long Run Variety And Colour To The Experiences We Receive.
Running
Views
Long
A Critic Has No Right To The Narrowness Which Is The Frequent Prerogative Of The Creative Artist.
Artist
Creative
Criticism
The People I Respect Most Behave As If They Were Immortal And As If Society Was Eternal.
People
Society
Literature
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.
Emotional
Civilization
Tolerance
Man Has To Pick Up The Use Of His Functions As He Goes Along- Especially The Function Of Love.
Men
Use
Function
...though Nothing Is Damaged, Everything Is Changed.
Changed
The Emotions May Be Endless. The More We Express Them, The More We May Have To Express.
May
Emotion
Endless
This Element Of Surprise Or Mystery — The Detective Element As It Is Sometimes Rather Emptily Called — Is Of Great Importance In A Plot. It Occurs Through A Suspension Of The Time-sequence; A Mystery Is A Pocket In Time, And It Occurs Crudely, As In "why Did The Queen Die?" And More Subtly In Half-explained Gestures And Words, The True Meaning Of Which Only Dawns Pages Ahead. Mystery Is Essential To A Plot, And Cannot Be Appreciated Without Intelligence.
Queens
Marching On
Appreciate
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.
Book
Gone
Littles
Nature Pulls One Way And Human Nature Another.
Way
Human Nature
Howards End
No Man Can Be An Agnostic Who Has A Sense Of Humour.
Men
Literature
Agnostic
Axiom : Novel Must Have Either One Living Character Or A Perfect Pattern: Fails Otherwise.
Character
Perfect
Patterns
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.
Voice
Poetry
Waiting
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.
Friendship
Writing
Finals
One Marvels Why The Middle Classes Still Insist On So Much Discomfort For Their Children At Such Expense To Themselves.
Children
Class
Literature
The Advance Of Regret Can Be So Gradual That It Is Impossible To Say "yesterday I Was Happy, Today I Am Not.
Regret
Yesterday
Today
I Do Like Christmas On The Whole.... In Its Clumsy Way, It Does Approach Peace And Goodwill. But It Is Clumsier Every Year.
Christmas
Holiday
Years
I Believe In Teaching People To Be Individuals, And To Understand Other Individuals.
Believe
Teaching
People
I'm A Holy Man Minus The Holiness. Hand That On To Your Three Spies, And Tell Them To Put It In Their Pipes.
Men
Hands
Spy
'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.'
Dream
Sleep
Lasts
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.
Men
Heaven
Unity
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.
Queens
Character
Novelists
Hope, Politeness, The Blowing Of A Nose, The Squeak Of A Boot, All Produce "boum.
Noses
Boots
Absence
Love And Understand The Italians, For The People Are More Marvellous Than The Land.
Land
People
Literature
There Has Been, Is, And Always Will Be Every Conceivable Type Of Person.
Type
Persons
Has Beens
English Literature Is A Flying Fish.
Fishing
Flying
Literature
Our Final Experience, Like Our First, Is Conjectural. We Move Between Two Darkness's.
Moving
Two
Darkness
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.
Believe
Passion
Way
The Crime Of Suicide Lies Rather In Its Disregard For The Feelings Of Those Whom We Leave Behind.
Suicide
Lying
Feelings
Words Deserted Him Immediately. He Could Only Speak When He Was Not Asked To.
Speak
Deserted
The Kingdom Of Music Is Not The Kingdom Of This World; It Will Accept Those Whom Breeding And Intellect And Culture Have Alike Rejected.
Culture
World
Kingdoms
Be Soft, Even If You Stand To Get Squashed.
Squash
Literature
Ifs
I Am Certainly An Ought And Not A Must.
Literature
Ought
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.
Teaching
Fate
Men
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.
Life
Nice
Being In Love
We Are All Like Scheherazade's Husband, In That We Want To Know What Happens Next.
Husband
Literature
Want
Of Course He Despised The World As A Whole; Every Thoughtful Man Should; It Is Almost A Test Of Refinement.
Thoughtful
Men
World
Those Who Prepared For All The Emergencies Of Life Beforehand May Equip Themselves At The Expense Of Joy.
Life
Joy
Preparation
Passion Does Not Blind. No. Passion Is Sanity, And The Woman You Love, She Is The Only Person You Will Ever Really Understand.
Passion
Doe
Sanity
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?
Book
Writing
India
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.
Men
August
Poetry
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.
Funny
Beauty
Humor
Growing Old Is An Emotion Which Comes Over Us At Almost Any Age; I Had It Myself Between The Ages Of 25 And 30.
Age
Growing
Emotion
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.
Giving
World
Easier
Nonsense And Beauty Have Close Connections.
Beauty
Connections
Literature
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
Sex
Men
There Are Moments When The Inner Life Actually 'pays,' When Years Of Self-scrutiny, Conducted For No Ulterior Motive, Are Suddenly Of Practical Use.
Self
Years
Use
He Had Shown Her All The Workings Of His Soul, Mistaking This For Love.
Inspirational
Inspiring
Soul
What The World Most Needs Today Are Negative Virtues - Not Minding People, Not Being Huffy, Touchy, Irritable Or Revengeful.
People
Huffy
Negative
Don't Believe Those Lies About Intellectual People. They're Only Written To Soothe The Majority.
Lying
Believe
People
I Hated The Idleness, The Stupidity, The Respectability, The Petty Unselfishness.
Hate
Stupidity
Petty
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.
Thinking
Understanding
Too Much
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.
Atheist
Believe
Mind
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.
Strength
Success
Taken
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.
Art
Taken
Men
Excuse My Mistakes, Realize My Limitations. Life Is Not Easy As We Know It On The Earth.
Mistake
Earth
Realizing
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.
Writing
Mountain
Literature
Towns Are After All Excrescences, Grey Fluxions, Where Men, Hurrying To Find One Another, Have Lost Themselves.
Men
Towns
Lost
Let Us Think Of People As Starting Life With An Experience They Forget And Ending It With One Which They Anticipate But Cannot Understand.
Thinking
People
Forget
Either Life Entails Courage, Or It Ceases To Be Life.
Courage
Literature
Be Courageous
The English Countryside, Its Growth And Its Destruction, Is A Genuine And Tragic Theme.
Growth
Literature
Destruction
In The Creative State A Man Is Taken Out Of Himself.
Inspirational
Taken
Creativity
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