Maurice

by E.M. Forster

If people noticed him they liked him, for he had a bright friendly face and responded to attention; but there were so many boys of his type—they formed the backbone of the school and we cannot notice each vertebra.

The rest of him fell asleep, bit by bit, and first of all his brain, his weakest organ. His body followed, then his feet carried him upstairs to escape the dawn. But his heart had lit never to be quenched again, and one thing in him at last was real.

“I say, Durham, have you been all right?” “Have you?” “No.” “You wrote you were.” “I wasn’t.”

“Clive, you’re a silly little fool, and since you’ve brought it up I think you’re beautiful, the only beautiful person I’ve ever seen. I love your voice and everything to do with you, down to your clothes or the room you are sitting in. I adore you.”

Clive knew that ecstasy cannot last, but can carve a channel for something lasting,

they themselves became equal. Neither thought “Am I led; am I leading?” Love had caught him out of triviality and Maurice out of bewilderment in order that two imperfect souls might touch perfection.

He hadn’t a God, he hadn’t a lover—the two usual incentives to virtue. But on he struggled with his back to ease, because dignity demanded it. There was no one to watch him, nor did he watch himself, but struggles like his are the supreme achievements of humanity, and surpass any legends about Heaven.

Farewell, beauty and warmth. They ended in muck and must go.

“Nothing’s the same for anyone. That’s why life’s this Hell, if you do a thing you’re damned, and if you don’t you’re damned—”

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

cancel your ticket, I’ll repay for it and that’s our start of getting free. Then we’ll do the next thing. It’s a risk, so’s everything else, and we’ll only live once.”

“Pity we ever met really if you come to think of it.”

He was back with his loneliness as it had been before Clive, as it was after Clive, and would now be for ever.

but this man had a special sense, being spiritual, and could scent out invisible emotions. Asceticism and piety have their practical side. They can generate insight, as Maurice realized too late. He had assumed at Penge that a white-faced parson in a cassock could never have conceived of masculine love, but he knew now that there is no secret of humanity which, from a wrong angle,

“Like the sun… it takes a year…”

I was yours once till death if you’d cared to keep me, but I’m someone else’s now—I can’t hang about whining for ever—and he’s mine in a way that shocks you, but why don’t you stop being shocked, and attend to your own happiness?”