Edward Morgan Forster

(1879 - 1970) English novelist

• "There's nothing like a debate to teach one quickness. I often wish I had gone in for them when I was a youngster. It would have helped me no end."
  • Howard's End (1910) (ch. 15)

• "Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die."
  • Howard's End (1910) (ch. 22)

• "Pathos, piety, courage, — they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value."
  • A Passage to India (1924)

• "As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through exams, so long must we take the examination system seriously. If another ladder to employment was contrived, much so-called education would disappear, and no one would be a penny the stupider."
  • Aspects of the Novel (1927)

• "A mirror does not develop because an historical pageant passes in front of it. It only develops when it gets a fresh coat of quicksilver - in other words, when it acquires new sensitiveness; and the novel's success lies in its own sensitiveness, not in the success of its subject matter."
  • Aspects of the Novel (1927)

• "If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country."
  • Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)

• "Two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. Two cheers are quite enough: there is no occasion to give it three."
  • Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)

Attributed

• "I would rather be a coward than brave, because people hurt you when you are brave."