“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.”
Beauty
“History develops, art stands still.”
ArtAll Quotes by E. M. Forster
“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
Life“Either life entails courage, or it ceases to be life.”
Courage“The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.”
Respect“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.”
Experience“What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.”
Great“One of the evils of money is that it tempts us to look at it rather than at the things that it buys.”
Money“The sadness of the incomplete, the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art.”
Art“If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.”
Hope“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“Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.”
Death“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.”
Death“I have no mystic faith in the people. I have in the individual.”
Faith“Love is always being given where it is not required.”
Love“One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.”
Trust“I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.”
Hope“The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.”
Death“Charm, in most men and nearly all women, is a decoration.”
Women“Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.”
Art“England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.”
Nature