Edward Morgan Forster quotes

“But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to merge in something else.”

— Edward Morgan Forster

“The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.”

— Edward Morgan Forster

“If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.”

— Edward Morgan Forster

“At the side of the everlasting why, is a yes, and a yes, and a yes.”

— Edward Morgan Forster

“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.”

— Edward Morgan Forster

“Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.”

— Edward Morgan Forster

“Two cheers for Democracy; one because it admits variety, and two because it permits criticism.”

— Edward Morgan Forster

“Liking one person is an extra reason for liking another.”

— Edward Morgan Forster

“Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch.”

— Edward Morgan Forster

“I'm a holy man minus the holiness.”

— Edward Morgan Forster

“Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.”

— Edward Morgan Forster

“Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvellous than the land.”

— Edward Morgan Forster

“Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.”

— Edward Morgan Forster

“Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return.”

— Edward Morgan Forster

“Only people who have been allowed to practise freedom can have the grown-up look in their eyes.”

— Edward Morgan Forster

“We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand.”

— Edward Morgan Forster

“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.”

— Edward Morgan Forster

“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.”

— Edward Morgan Forster

“No man can be an agnostic who has a sense of humour.”

— Edward Morgan Forster

“Nonsense and beauty have close connections.”

— Edward Morgan Forster

“One of the evils of money is that it tempts us to look at it rather than at the things that it buys.”

— Edward Morgan Forster