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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.

-E. M. Forster

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She Had Been So

E. M. Forster

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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 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?

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

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.

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

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

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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.

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

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

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

Charm, In Most Men And Nearly All Women, Is A Decoration.

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

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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 . . . .

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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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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.

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.

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

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Paganism Is Infectious, More Infectious Than Diphtheria Or Piety.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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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

My Conviction Gains Infinitely The Moment Another Soul Will Believe In It.

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

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

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

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

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.

The Middle Age Of Buggers Is Not To Be Contemplated Without Horror.

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.

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.

... There Are Shadows Because There Are Hills.

Room With A View

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

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

Railway Termini Are Our Gates To The Glorious And The Unknown

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.

Freedom Does Not Guarantee Masterpieces.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Nonsense And Beauty Have Close Connections.

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

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

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.

Lord I Disbelieve - Help Thou My Unbelief.

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.

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

Adventures Do Occur, But Not Punctually.

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.

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

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

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.

Be Soft, Even If You Stand To Get Squashed.

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.

Love Is Always Being Given Where It Is Not Required.

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It Isn't Possible To Love And To Part.

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

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

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

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

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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.

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

Life Is Easy To Chronicle, But Bewildering To Practice.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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 Is Something Majestic In The Bad Taste Of Italy.

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.

Human Beings Have Their Great Chance In The Novel.

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

Though Life Is Very Glorious, It Is Difficult.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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Room With A View

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

The Historian Records, But The Novelist Creates.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Liking One Person Is An Extra Reason For Liking Another.

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.

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.

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

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

Personal Relationships

Reformers Who Are Obsessed With Purity And Cannot See That Their Obsession Is Impure.

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

They Had Nothing In Common But The English Language.

English Language

Without Form, The Sensitiveness Vanishes.

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Murray Rothbard

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