E. M. Forster

“Books have to be read (worse luck, for it takes a long time); it is the only way of discovering what they contain.”

“Mr. Ansell was not merely a man of some education; he had what no education can bring — the power of detecting what is important. Like many fathers, he had spared no expense over his boy, —...”

“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...”

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

“It is my fate and perhaps my temperament to sign agreements with fools.”

“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.”

“Charm, in most men and nearly all women, is a decoration.”

“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 ab...”

“The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists.”

“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.”

“There is something majestic in the bad taste of Italy.”

“Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man.”

“Those who prepared for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy.”

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

“Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice.”

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

“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.”

“Ideas are fatal to caste.”

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

“The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.”