Howards End

by E.M. Forster

Young Wilcox was pouring in petrol, starting his engine, and performing other actions with which this story has no concern.

In its dissolution one heard the terrible, ominous note, and a goblin, with increased malignity, walked quietly over the universe from end to end. Panic and emptiness! Panic and emptiness! Even the flaming ramparts of the world might fall.

To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it.

"Money pads the edges of things," said Miss Schlegel. "God help those who have none."

She had told a little of her grim secret to her friends, but not too much; she had shut up her heart—almost, but not entirely. It is thus, if there is any rule, that we ought to die—neither as victim nor as fanatic, but as the seafarer who can greet with an equal eye the deep that he is entering, and the shore that he must leave.

"I believe we shall come to care about people less and less, Helen. The more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace them. It's one of the curses of London. I quite expect to end my life caring most for a place."

Love, say the ascetics, reveals our shameful kinship with the beasts.

If he was a fortress she was a mountain peak, whom all might tread, but whom the snows made nightly virginal.