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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.

-E. M. Forster

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The Most Successful Career

E. M. Forster

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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.

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

Only A Struggle Twists Sentimentality And Lust Together Into Love.

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

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.

Adventures Do Occur, But Not Punctually.

How Few Writers Can Prostitute All Their Powers!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

In Time, Mr Hall, One Gets To Recognize That Sneer, That Hardness, For Fornication Extends Far Beyond The Actual Deed. Were It A Deed Only, I For One Would Not Hold It Anathema. But When The Nations Went A Whoring They Invariably Ended By Denying God, I Think, And Until All Sexual Irregularities And Not Some Of Them Are Penal The Church Will Never Reconquer England.

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

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

I Am Certainly An Ought And Not A Must.

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!

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

Though Life Is Very Glorious, It Is Difficult.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Then She Lay On Her Back And Gazed At The Cloudless Sky. Mr. Beebe, Whose Opinion Of Her Rose Daily, Whispered To His Niece That That Was The Proper Way To Behave If Any Little Thing Went Wrong.

Without Form, The Sensitiveness Vanishes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Be Soft, Even If You Stand To Get Squashed.

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

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.

The Strong Are So Stupid.

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

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

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

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

She Loved Him Absolutely, Perhaps For Half An Hour.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Nature Pulls One Way And Human Nature Another.

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

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

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

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

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.

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. . .

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

Room With A View

The Story Of The Fall Always Fascinates Me As A Play Ground, But I Cannot Find Any Profound Meaning In It, Because Of My 'liberal' View Of Human Nature: I Cannot Believe In A State Of Original Innocence, Still Less In A Profound Meaning In It, And I Am Always Minimising The Conception And The Extent Of Sin And The Sinfulness Of Sex.

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

It Isn't Possible To Love And To Part.

Room With A View

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

Belfastas Uncivilised As Ever--savage Black Mothers In Houses Of Dark Red Brick, Friendly Manufacturers Too Drunk To Entertain You When You Arrive. It Amuses Me Till I Get Tired.

But Humanity, In Its Desire For Comfort, Had Over-reached Itself. It Had Exploited The Riches Of Nature Too Far. Quietly And Complacently, It Was Sinking Into Decadence, And Progress Had Come To Mean The Progress Of The Machine.

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.

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.

I Distrust Great Men. They Produce A Desert Of Uniformity Around Them And Often A Pool Of Blood Too, And I Always Feel A Little Man's Pleasure When They Come A Cropper.

Love Is Always Being Given Where It Is Not Required.

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.

Don't Go Fighting Against The Spring.

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.

Ideas Are Fatal To Caste.

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

Long Books, When Read, Are Usually Overpraised, Because The Reader Wishes To Convince Others And Himself That He Has Not Wasted His Time.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Congratulations

I Believe In Teaching People To Be Individuals, And To Understand Other Individuals.

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

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

...though Nothing Is Damaged, Everything Is Changed.

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

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

Paganism Is Infectious, More Infectious Than Diphtheria Or Piety.

We May Divide Characters Into Flat And Round.

In Europe Life Retreats Out Of The Cold, And Exquisite Fireside Myths Have Resulted—balder, Persephone—but [in India] The Retreat Is From The Source Of Life, The Treacherous Sun, And No Poetry Adorns It Because Disillusionment Cannot Be Beautiful. Men Yearn For Poetry Though They May Not Confess It; They Desire That Joy Shall Be Graceful And Sorrow August And Infinity Have A Form, And India Fails To Accommodate Them.

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

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

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.

You Talk As If A God Had Made The Machine," Cried The Other. "i Believe That You Pray To It When You Are Unhappy. Men Made It, Do Not Forget That. Great Men, But Men. The Machine Is Much, But Not Everything.

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

Room With A View

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.

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.

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

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.

Nonsense And Beauty Have Close Connections.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

I Am An Unspeakable Of The Oscar Wilde Sort.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Either Life Entails Courage, Or It Ceases To Be Life.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Like All Her Friends, I Miss Her Greatly...but...i Am Sure There Is No Case For Lamentation...virginia Woolf Got Through An Immense Amount Of Work, She Gave Acute Pleasure In New Ways, She Pushed The Light Of The English Language A Little Further Against Darkness. Those Are Facts.

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

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 . . . .

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?

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.

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

Suspense: The Only Literary Tool That Has Any Effect Upon Tyrants And Savages.

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

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

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

Finding Happiness

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

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.

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 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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Life's Very Difficult And Full Of Surprises. At All Events, I've Got As Far As That. To Be Humble And Kind, To Go Straight Ahead, To Love People Rather Than Pity Them, To Remember The Submerged - Well, One Can't Do All These Things At Once, Worse Luck, Because They're So Contradictory. It's Then That Proportion Comes In - To Live By Proportion. Don't Begin With Proportion. Only Prigs Do That. Let Proportion Come In As A Last Resource, When The Better Things Have Failed.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Personal Relationships

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.

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

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

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

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

Reverence Is Fatal To Literature.

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.

School Was The Unhappiest Time Of My Life And The Worst Trick It Ever Played On Me Was To Pretend That It Was The World In Miniature. For It Hindered Me From Discovering How Lovely And Delightful And Kind The World Can Be, And How Much Of It Is Intelligible.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Solidity, Caution, Integrity, Efficiency. Lack Of Imagination, Hypocrisy. These Qualities Characterize The Middle Classes In Everycountry, But In England They Are National Characteristics.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

'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.'

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.

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.

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

She Would Only Point Out The Salvation That Was Latent In His Own Soul, And In The Soul Of Every Man. Only Connect! That Was The Whole Of Her Sermon. Only Connect The Prose And The Passion, And Both Will Be Exalted, And Human Love Will Be Seen At Its Height. Live In Fragments No Longer. Only Connect, And The Beast And The Monk, Robbed Of The Isolation That Is Life To Either, Will Die.

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.

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

Democracies Have

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

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.

English Literature Is A Flying Fish.

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

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

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.

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

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

It Is Now Only In Letters I Write What I Feel: Not In Literature Any More, And I Seldom Say It, Because I Keep Trying To Be Amusing.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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