… But so few of us think clearly about our own private incomes, and admit that independent thoughts are in nine cases out of ten the result of independent means.

— E.M. Forster

But the body is deeper than the soul and its secrets inscrutable.

— E.M. Forster

But they did not chatter much, for the boy, when he liked a person, would as soon sit silent in his company as speak.

— E.M. Forster

Consequently, the Offended recommendations will be indefinitely rejected, police prosecutions will continue and Clive on the bench will continue to sentence Alec in the dock. Maurice may get off.

— E.M. Forster

Culture had worked in her own case, but during the last few weeks she had doubted whether it humanized the majority, so wide and so widening is the gulf that stretches between the natural and the philosophic man, so many the good chaps who are wrecked in trying to cross it.

— E.M. Forster

Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him.

— E.M. Forster

Did you ever dream you had a friend, Alec? Someone to last your whole life and you his. I suppose such a thing can’t really happen outside sleep.

— E.M. Forster

Either life entails courage or it ceases to be life.

— E.M. Forster

Expansion. That is the idea the novelist must cling to. Not completion. Not rounding off, but opening out.

— E.M. Forster

Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch, which ought to be applied as sparingly as possible. I dislike the stuff. I do not believe in it, for its own sake, at all... My lawgivers are Erasmus and Montaigne, not Moses and St Paul. My temple stands not upon Mount Moriah but in the Elysian Field where even the immoral are admitted. My motto is 'Lord, I disbelieve — help thou my unbelief.

— E.M. Forster