E. M. 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.”

“I'm a holy man minus the holiness.”

“The sadness of the incomplete, the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art.”

“One is certain of nothing but the truth of one's own emotions.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Surely the only sound foundation for a civilization is a sound state of mind.”

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

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

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

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

“Reverence is fatal to literature.”

“Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.”

“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.”

“There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer.”

“It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness.”

“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.”