E. M. Forster

One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.

A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.

One marvels why the middle classes still insist on so much discomfort for their children at such expense to themselves.

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.

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

I'm a holy man minus the holiness.

I have no mystic faith in the people. I have in the individual.

England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.

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.

Nonsense and beauty have close connections.

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

At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.