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The Present Flowed By Them Like A Stream. The Tree Rustled. It Had Made Music Before They Were Born, And Would Continue After Their Deaths, But Its Song Was Of The Moment. The Moment Had Passed. The Tree Rustled Again. Their Senses Were Sharpened, And They Seemed To Apprehend Life. Life Passed. The Tree Rustled Again.

-E. M. Forster

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The Present Flowed By

E. M. Forster

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The Present Flowed By Them Like A Stream. The Tree Rustled. It Had Made Music Before They Were Born, And Would Continue After Their Deaths, But Its Song Was Of The Moment. The Moment Had Passed. The Tree Rustled Again. Their Senses Were Sharpened, And They Seemed To Apprehend Life. Life Passed. The Tree Rustled Again.

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Freedom Of Speech

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!

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

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.

Nature Pulls One Way And Human Nature Another.

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

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

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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.

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

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

One Of The Evils Of Money Is That It Tempts Us To Look At It Rather Than At The Things That It Buys.

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.

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

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

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

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How Few Writers Can Prostitute All Their Powers!

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

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.

Lord I Disbelieve - Help Thou My Unbelief.

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

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.

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

If Human Nature Does Alter It Will Be Because Individuals Manage To Look At Themselves In A New Way. Here And There People - A Very Few People, But A Few Novelists Are Among Them - Are Trying To Do This. Every Institution And Vested Interest In Against Such A Search: Organized Religion, The State, The Family In Its Economic Aspect, Have Nothing To Gain, And It Is Only When Outward Prohibitions Weaken That It Can Proceed: History Conditions It To That Extent.

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

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

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

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

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.

Life Is Easy To Chronicle, But Bewildering To Practice.

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

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

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.

Without Form, The Sensitiveness Vanishes.

The Most Successful Career Must Show A Waste Of Strength That Might Have Removed Mountains, And The Most Unsuccessful Is Not That Of The Man Who Is Taken Unprepared, But Of Him Who Has Prepared And Is Never Taken.

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

They Had Nothing In Common But The English Language.

English Language

I Have Always Found Writing Pleasant And Don't Understand What People Mean By 'throes Of Creation.'

I Am Certainly An Ought And Not A Must.

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.

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

Personal Relationships

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.

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.

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

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

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

I'm A Holy Man Minus The Holiness.

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.

It Isn't Possible To Love And To Part.

Room With A View

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

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.

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

He Educated Maurice, Or Rather His Spirit Educated Maurice's Spirit, For They Themselves Became Equal. Neither Thought "am I Led; Am I Leading?" Love Had Caught Him Out Of Triviality And Maurice Out Of Bewilderment In Order That Two Imperfect Souls Might Touch Perfection.

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.

Human Beings Have Their Great Chance In The Novel.

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.

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.

Are Not Beauty And Delicacy The Same?

Room With A View

It Is Easy To Sympathize At A Distance,' Said An Old Gentleman With A Beard. 'i Value More The Kind Word That Is Spoken Close To My Ear.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Railway Termini Are Our Gates To The Glorious And The Unknown

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.

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

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.

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.

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The Strong Are So Stupid.

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

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

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

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

Nonsense And Beauty Have Close Connections.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

England Has Always Been Disinclined To Accept Human Nature.

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.

America Is Rather Like Life. You Can Usually Find In It What You Look For It Will Probably Be Interesting, And It Is Sure To Be Large.

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

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.

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.

A Novel Is Based On Evidence, + Or -x, The Unknown Quantity Being The Temperament Of The Novelist, And The Unknown Quantity Always Modifies The Effect Of The Evidence, And Sometimes Transforms It Entirely.

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.

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Adventures Do Occur, But Not Punctually.

In The Novel We Can Know People Perfectly, And, Apart From The General Pleasure Of Reading, We Can Find Here A Compensation For Their Dimness In Life.

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.

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.

She Loved Him Absolutely, Perhaps For Half An Hour.

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

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?

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

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

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.

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

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.

The So Called White Races Are Really Pinko-grey.

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.

Be Soft, Even If You Stand To Get Squashed.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

I Am An Unspeakable Of The Oscar Wilde Sort.

Curiosity Is One Of The Lowest Of The Human Faculties. You Will Have Noticed In Daily Life That When People Are Inquisitive They Nearly Always Have Bad Memories And Are Usually Stupid At Bottom.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Don't Go Fighting Against The Spring.

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

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.

When Love Flies It Is Remembered Not As Love But As Something Else. Blessed Are The Uneducated, Who Forget It Entirely, And Are Never Conscious Of Folly Or Pruriency In The Past, Of Long Aimless Conversations.

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

Do You Suppose There's Any Difference Between Spring In Nature And Spring In Man? But There We Go, Praising The One And Condemning The Other As Improper, Ashamed That The Same Laws Work Eternally Through Both.

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.

“it Is Fate That I Am Here,” Persisted George. “but You Can Call It Italy If It Makes You Less Unhappy.”

Room With A View

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.

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.

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.

Love Is Always Being Given Where It Is Not Required.

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.

'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.'

There Is Something Majestic In The Bad Taste Of Italy.

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.

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.

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.

I Would Rather Be A Coward Than Brave Because People Hurt You When You Are Brave.

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

The Hungry And The Homeless Don't Care About Liberty Any More Than They Care About Cultural Heritage. To Pretend That They Do Care Is Cant.

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

Room With A View

Money Pads The Edges Of Things.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Liking One Person Is An Extra Reason For Liking Another.

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.

Though Life Is Very Glorious, It Is Difficult.

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.

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

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

Finding Happiness

A Mirror Does Not Develop Because An Historical Pageant Passes In Front Of It. It Only Develops When It Gets A Fresh Coat Of Quicksilver In Other Words, When It Acquires New Sensitiveness; And The Novel's Success Lies In Its Own Sensitiveness, Not In The Success Of Its Subject Matter.

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.

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

I Do Like Christmas On The Whole.... In Its Clumsy Way, It Does Approach Peace And Goodwill. But It Is Clumsier Every Year.

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

Reverence Is Fatal To Literature.

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

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.

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

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

I Do Not Believe In Belief.

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

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

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

The 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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.

The Historian Records, But The Novelist Creates.

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.

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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