Maurice

by E.M. Forster

he saw that while deceiving others he had been deceived, and mistaken them for the empty creatures he wanted them to think he was.

But his heart had lit never to be quenched again, and one thing in him at last was real.

A slow nature such as Maurice’s appears insensitive, for it needs time even to feel. Its instinct is to assume that nothing either for good or evil has happened, and to resist the invader. Once gripped, it feels acutely, and its sensations in love are particularly profound.

I’m thankful it’s into your hands I fell.

He was obliged however to throw over Christianity. Those who base their conduct upon what they are rather than upon what they ought to be, always must throw it over in the end,

but it was the stupidity of passion, which would rather have nothing than a little.

“Maurice! Maurice! you’ve actually come. You’re here. This place’ll never seem the same again, I shall love it at last.”

“I should have gone through life half awake if you’d had the decency to leave me alone.

Conscious that life grew daily more amazing, he said nothing.

When love flies it is remembered not as love but as something else.

Sadder and older, but without a crisis, they would slip into a relation, as evening into night.

“Will the law ever be that in England?” “I doubt it. England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.”

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

I’m flesh and blood, if you’ll condescend to such low things

You don’t worry whether your relation with her is platonic or not, you only know it’s big enough to hang a life on.

A happy ending was imperative. I shouldn’t have bothered to write otherwise. I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows,