E.M. Forster

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

There are different ways of evil and I prefer mine to yours.

Adventures do occur, but not punctually.

He had awoken too late for happiness, but not for strength, and could feel an austere joy, as of a warrior who is homeless but stands fully armed.

After all, is not a real Hell better than a manufactured Heaven?

The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say "yesterday I was happy, today I am not.

Mr. Pembroke, watching his broad back, desired to bury a knife in it. The desire passed, partly because it was unclerical, partly because he had no knife, and partly because he soon blurred over what had happened. To him all criticism was "rudeness": he never heeded it, for he never needed it: he was never wrong.

Standing each by his monster, they looked at each other, and smiled

I think everyone fails, but there are so many kinds of failure.

The past is devoid of meaning like the present, and a refuge for cowards.

He lived on, miserable and misunderstood, as before, and increasingly lonely. One cannot write those words too often: Maurice__ loneliness: it increased.

With the first jolt he was in daylight; they had left the gateways of King__ Cross, and were under blue sky. Tunnels followed, and after each the sky grew bluer, and from the embankment at Finsbury Park he had his first sight of the sun. It rolled along behind the eastern smokes _ a wheel, whose fellow was the descending moon _ and as yet it seemed the servant of the blue sky, not its lord. He dozed again. Over Tewin Water it was day. To the left fell the shadow of the embankment and its arches; to the right Leonard saw up into the Tewin Woods and towards the church, with its wild legend of immortality. Six forest trees _ that is a fact _ grow out of one of the graves in Tewin churchyard. The grave__ occupant _ that is the legend _ is an atheist, who declared that if God existed, six forest trees would grow out of her grave. These things in Hertfordshire; and farther afield lay the house of a hermit _ Mrs. Wilcox had known him _ who barred himself up, and wrote prophecies, and gave all he had to the poor. While, powdered in between, were the villas of business men, who saw life more steadily, though with the steadiness of the half-closed eye. Over all the sun was streaming, to all the birds were singing, to all the primroses were yellow, and the speedwell blue, and the country, however they interpreted her, was uttering her cry of __ow. _ She did not free Leonard yet, and the knife plunged deeper into his heart as the train drew up at Hilton. But remorse had become beautiful.

__he Emersons who were at Florence, do you mean? No, I don__ suppose it will prove to be them. It is probably a long cry from them to friends of Mr. Vyse__. Oh, Mrs. Honeychurch, the oddest people! The queerest people! For our part we liked them, didn__ we?_ He appealed to Lucy. __here was a great scene over some violets. They picked violets and filled all the vases in the room of these very Miss Alans who have failed to come to Cissie Villa. Poor little ladies! So shocked and so pleased. It used to be one of Miss Catharine__ great stories. __y dear sister loves flowers,_ it began. They found the whole room a mass of blue _ vases and jugs _ and the story ends with __o ungentlemanly and yet so beautiful._ It is all very difficult. Yes, I always connect those Florentine Emersons with violets.__

Italy and London are the only places where I don't feel to exist on sufferance.

As her time in Florence drew to a close she was only at ease amongst those to whom she felt indifferent.

She grew more and more vexed with his dignified behavior. By a cruel irony, she was drawing out what was best in his disposition.

It is not rubbish! It is the part of people that you do not understand.

Unless we remember we cannot understand.