Maurice

by E.M. Forster

Then darkness rolled up again, the darkness that is primeval but not eternal, and yields to its own painful dawn.

The second dream is more difficult to convey. Nothing happened. He scarcely saw a face, scarcely heard a voice say, “That is your friend,” and then it was over, having filled him with beauty and taught him tenderness. He could die for such a friend, he would allow such a friend to die for him; they would make any sacrifice for each other, and count the world nothing, neither death nor distance nor crossness could part them, because “this is my friend.”

The school clapped not because Maurice was eminent but because he was average. It could celebrate itself in his image.

and, hero though he was, he longed to be a little boy again, and to stroll half awake for ever by the colourless sea.

What hope for Maurice who was nothing but falsities?

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

Outwardly in retreat, he thought that his Faith was a pawn well lost; for in capturing it Durham had exposed his heart.

Now that the man who returned his love had been lost, he admitted this.

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,

They cared for no one, they were outside humanity, and death, had it come, would only have continued their pursuit of a retreating horizon.

The one embrace in the darkness, the one long day in the light and the wind, were twin columns, each useless without the other.

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

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.”

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

μὴ φῦναι τὸν ἅπαντα νικᾷ λόγον,

"May the all-conquering word not be heard."

Blessed are the uneducated, who forget it entirely, and are never conscious of folly or pruriency in the past, of long aimless conversations.

“My darling, I didn’t mean to.”

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.

unspeakables of the Oscar Wilde sort?”

“I’m an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.”

perhaps my favorite line ever?

it happened to be the symphony of Tchaikovsky Clive had taught him to like.

he gave her his body and soul, he poured out at her feet all that an earlier passion had taught him, and could only remember with an effort for whom that passion had been.

What did clothes matter as long as you got your food,

preach maurice!!

they must show that when two are gathered together majorities shall not triumph.

England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.”

“It comes to this then: there always have been people like me and always will be, and generally they have been persecuted.”

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

He saw from their faces, as from the faces of his clerks and his partners, that they had never known real joy. Society had catered for them too completely. They had never struggled, and only a struggle twists sentimentality and lust together into love.

They knew too little about each other—and too much. Hence fear. Hence cruelty. And he rejoiced because he had understood Alec’s infamy through his own—glimpsing, not for the first time, the genius who hides in man’s tormented soul.

By now they were in love with one another consciously.

O for the night that was ending, for the sleep and the wakefulness, the toughness and tenderness mixed, the sweet temper, the safety in darkness. Would such a night ever return?

Love was an emotion through which you occasionally enjoyed yourself. It could not do things.

Alec was not a hero or god, but a man embedded in society like himself, for whom sea and woodland and the freshening breeze and the sun were preparing no apotheosis.

Her air and sky were theirs, not the timorous millions’ who own stuffy little boxes, but never their own souls.

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?”

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, and in this sense Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood.

He has annoyed me.

real