Howards End Quotes

“The house was very quiet, and the fog—we are in November now—pressed against the windows like an excluded ghost.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“And again and again fell the word, like the ebb of a dying sea.

"Good-bye.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“She had a strong, if erroneous, conviction of her own futility, and wished she had never come out of her backwater, where nothing happened except art and literature, and where no one ever got married or succeeded in remaining engaged.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness, to think that a thousand square miles are a thousand times more wonderful than one square mile, and that a million square miles are almost the same as heaven.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him—that is the best account of it that has been yet given. Squalor and tragedy can beckon to all that is great in us; and strengthen the wings of love.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“I can never be perfectly certain whether Helen was got with child by Leonard Bast or by his fatal forgotten umbrella. All things considered, I think it must have been the umbrella.”
― Katherine Mansfield

“Live in fragments no longer, only connect.”
― E.M. Forster

“You have less restraint rather than more as you grow older. Think it over and alter yourself, or we shan't have happy lives.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“In this jangle of causes and effects, what had become of their true selves? Here Leonard lay dead in the garden, from natural causes; yet life was a deep, deep river, death a blue sky, life was a house, death a wisp of hay, a flower, a tower, life and death were anything and everything, except this ordered insanity, where the king takes the queen, and the ace the king. Ah, no; there was beauty and adventure behind, such as the man at her feet had yearned for; there was hope this side of the grave; there were truer relationships beyond the limits that fetter us now. As a prisoner looks up and sees stars beckoning, so she, from the turmoil and horror of those days, caught glimpses of the diviner wheels.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“Because a thing is going strong now, it need not go strong forever... This craze for motion has only set in during the last hundred years. It may be followed by a civilization that won't be a movement, because it will rest on the earth. All the signs are against it now, but I can't help hoping, and very early in the morning in the garden I feel that out house is the future as well as the past.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“Preachers or scientists may generalize, but we know that no generality is possible about those whom we love; not one heaven awaits them, not even one oblivion.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“It's a room that men have spoilt through trying to make it nice for women. Men don't know that we want—"

"And never will.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“Both times it was loneliness, and the night, and panic afterwards.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“At such moments the soul retires within, to float upon the bosom of a deeper stream, and has communion with the dead, and sees the world's glory not diminished, but different in kind to what she has supposed.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“In her eyes Henry was always moving, and causing others to move, until the ends of the earth met. But in time he must get too tired to move, and settle down. What next? The inevitable word. The release of the soul to its appropriate Heaven.

Would they meet in it? Margaret believed in immortality for herself. An eternal future had always seemed natural to her. And Henry believed in it for himself. Yet, would they meet again? Are there not rather endless levels beyond the grave, as the theory that he had censured teaches? And his level, whether higher or lower, could it possibly be the same as hers?”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“She lowered her eyes a moment to the black abyss of the past.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“I used to be so dreamy about a man's love as a girl, and think that, for good or evil, love must be the great thing. But it hasn't been; it has been itself a dream.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“Well, it is odd and sad that our minds should be such seed-beds, and we without power to choose the seed. But man is an odd, sad creature as yet, intent on pilfering the earth, and heedless of the growths within himself.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“Tibby is moderately a dear now," said Helen.

"There! I knew you'd say that in the end. Of course he's a dear.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“But this place has wonderful powers."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know."

"Because I probably agree with you."

"It kills what is dreadful and makes what is beautiful live.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“It is like you to have thought of such a beautiful thing."

Not a thing, only an ending, "said Helen rather sadly; and the sense of tragedy closed in on Margaret again as soon as she left the house.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“Helen forgot people. They were husks that had enclosed her emotion.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“She and the victim seemed alone in a world of unreality, and she loved him absolutely, perhaps for half an hour.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“The Wilcoxes were not lacking in affection; they had it royally, but they did not know how to use it. It was the talent in the napkin, and, for a warm-hearted man, Charles had conveyed very little joy. As he watched his father shuffling up the road, he had a vague regret—a wish that something had been different somewhere—a wish (though he did not express it thus) that he had been taught to say 'I' in his youth.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“Alas! that Henry should fade away as reality emerged, and only her love for him should remain clear, stamped with his image like the cameos we rescue out of dreams.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“Nor am I concerned with duty. I'm concerned with the characters of various people whom we know, and how, things being as they are, things may be made a little better.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“What do you actually care about?"

"People," I said.

"All right, E.M. Forster.”
― Andrew Martin, Early Work

“Paul and his mother, ripple and great wave, had flowed into her life and ebbed out of it forever. The ripple had left no traces behind: the wave had strewn at her feet fragments torn from the unknown. A curious seeker, she stood for a while at the verge of the sea that tells so little, but tells a little, and watched the outgoing of the tide.”
― E. M. Forster

“Death destroys a man: the idea of it saves him.”
― E.M. Forster, Howard's End

“My motto is Concentrate. I've no intention of frittering away my strength on that sort of thing." "It isn't frittering away the strength," she protested. "It's enlarging the space in which you may be strong.”
― Forster, E.M.