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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.

-E. M. Forster

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This Element Of Surprise

E. M. Forster

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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.

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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.

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.

Mistrust All Enterprises That Require New Clothes.

Reverence Is Fatal To Literature.

It So Happened That Lucy, Who Found Daily Life Rather Chaotic, Entered A More Solid World When She Opened The Piano. She Was Then No Longer Either Deferential Or Patronizing; No Longer Either A Rebel Or A Slave.

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

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

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

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

Do You Remember Italy?

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. . .

The Advance Of Regret Can Be So Gradual That It Is Impossible To Say "yesterday I Was Happy, Today I Am Not.

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!

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.

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.

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.

... There Are Shadows Because There Are Hills.

Room With A View

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Personal Relationships

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?

Personal Relations Are The Important Thing For Ever And Ever, And Not This Outer Life Of Telegrams And Anger.

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.

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

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

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

They Had Nothing In Common But The English Language.

English Language

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.

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.

A Happy Ending Was Imperative. I Shouldn't Have Bothered To Write Otherwise. I Was Determined That In Fiction Anyway Two Men Should Fall In Love And Remain In It For The Ever And Ever That Fiction Allows, And In This Sense, Maurice And Alec Still Roam The Greenwood.

Falling In Love

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.

Freedom Does Not Guarantee Masterpieces.

England Has Always Been Disinclined To Accept Human Nature.

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

Logic! Good Gracious! What Rubbish!

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.

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

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

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

The So Called White Races Are Really Pinko-grey.

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

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.

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.

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

It Isn't Possible To Love And To Part.

Room With A View

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revealing Something

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

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

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.

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.

Love Is Always Being Given Where It Is Not Required.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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 Do Not Believe In Belief.

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 . . . .

She Stopped And Leant Her Elbows Against The Parapet Of The Embankment. He Did Likewise. There Is At Times A Magic In Identity Of Position; It Is One Of The Things That Have Suggested To Us Eternal Comradeship.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

A Critic Has No Right To The Narrowness Which Is The Frequent Prerogative Of The Creative Artist.

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

Democracies Have

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

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

Finding Happiness

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.

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.

[...] 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.

What The World Most Needs Today Are Negative Virtues - Not Minding People, Not Being Huffy, Touchy, Irritable Or Revengeful.

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

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

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

Congratulations

As For 'story' I Never Yet Did Enjoy A Novel Or Play In Which Someone Didn't Tell Me Afterward That There Was Something Wrong With The Story, So That's Going To Be No Drawback As Far As I'm Concerned. "good Lord, Why Am I So Bored" "i Know; It Must Be The Plot Developing Harmoniously." So I Often Reply To Myself, And There Rises Before Me My Special Nightmare That Of The Writer As Craftsman, Natty And Deft.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Life Is Easy To Chronicle, But Bewildering To Practice.

Are Not Beauty And Delicacy The Same?

Room With A View

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

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

Money Pads The Edges Of Things.

We May Divide Characters Into Flat And Round.

Railway Termini Are Our Gates To The Glorious And The Unknown

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

'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.'

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Truth Is A Flower In Whose Neighbourhood Others Must Wither.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

It Is My Fate And Perhaps My Temperament To Sign Agreements With Fools.

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

History Develops, Art Stands Still.

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.

For You Cannot Have Gentility Without Paying For It.

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

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.

Don't Go Fighting Against The Spring.

Lord I Disbelieve - Help Thou My Unbelief.

Their Quarrel Was No More Surprising Than Are Most Quarrels — Inevitable At The Time, Incredible Afterwards.

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

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

Room With A View

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.

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

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

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.

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

The Historian Records, But The Novelist Creates.

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.

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

“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

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 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

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.

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

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.

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

She Loved Him Absolutely, Perhaps For Half An Hour.

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

The Four Characteristics Of Humanism Are Curiosity, A Free Mind, Belief In Good Taste, And Belief In The Human Race.

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

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

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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