Where Angels Fear to Tread Quotes

“I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it — and I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil. I don't die — I don't fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there.”
― E. M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“All a child's life depends on the ideal it has of its parents. Destroy that and everything goes - morals, behavior, everything. Absolute trust in someone else is the essence of education.”
― E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“Don't be mysterious; there isn't the time.”
― E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“You told me once that we shall be judged by our intentions, not by our accomplishments. I thought it a grand remark. But we must intend to accomplish—not sit intending on a chair.”
― E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say "yesterday I was happy, today I am not.”
― E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“For a wonderful physical tie binds the parents to the children; and—by some sad, strange irony—it does not bind us children to our parents. For if it did, if we could answer their love not with gratitude but with equal love, life would lose much of its pathos and much of its squalor, and we might be wonderfully happy.”
― E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“Every little trifle, for some reason, does seem incalculably important today, and when you say of a thing that 'nothing hangs on it,' it sounds like blasphemy. There's never any knowing—(how am I to put it?)—which of our actions, which of our idlenesses won't have things hanging on it for ever.”
― E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“He had known so much about her once -what she thought, how she felt, the reasons for her actions. And now he only knew that he loved her, and all the other knowledge seemed passing from him just as he needed it most.”
― E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“Let her go to Italy!" he cried. "Let her meddle with what she doesn't understand! ”
― E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“Society is invincible—to a certain degree. But your real life is your own, and nothing can touch it. There is no power on earth that can prevent your criticizing and despising mediocrity—nothing that can stop you retreating into splendour and beauty—into the thoughts and beliefs that make the real life—the real you.”
― E M Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“For the dead, who seem to take away so much, really take with them nothing that is ours.”
― E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“In Rome one had simply to sit still and feel.”
― E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“They travelled for thirteen hours down-hill, whilst the streams broadened and the mountains shrank, and the vegetation changed, and the people ceased being ugly and drinking beer, and began instead to drink wine and to be beautiful.”
― E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“Oh, what's the use of your fairmindedness if you never decide for yourself? Anyone gets hold of you and makes you do what they want. And you see through them and laugh at them - and do it. It's not enough to see clearly; I'm muddle-headed and stupid, and not worth a quarter of you, but I have tried to do what seemed right at the time. And you - your brain and your insight are splendid. But when you see what's right you're too idle to do it. You told me once that we shall be judged by our intentions, not by our accomplishments. I thought it a grand remark. But we must intend to accomplish - not sit intending on a chair.”
― E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“For the barrier of language is sometimes a blessed barrier, which only lets pass what is good. Or--to put the thing less cynically--we may be better in new clean words, which have never been tainted by our pettiness or vice. Phillip, at all events, lived more graciously in Italian, the very phrases of which entice one to be happy and kind.”
― E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“Miss Abbott, don't worry over me. Some people are born not to do things. I'm one of them.”
― E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“They sowed the duller vegetables first, and a pleasant feeling of righteous fatigue stole over them as they addressed themselves to the peas.”
― E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“Mr. Herriton, don’t – please, Mr. Herriton – a dentist. His father’s a dentist.”
Philip gave a cry of personal disgust and pain. He shuddered all over, and edged away from his companion. A dentist! A dentist at Monteriano. A dentist in fairyland! False teeth and laughing gas and the tilting chair at a place which knew the Etruscan League, and the Pax Romana, and Alaric himself, and the Countess Matilda, and the Middle Ages, all fighting and holiness, and the Renaissance, all fighting and beauty! He thought of Lilia no longer. He was anxious for himself: he feared that Romance might die.”
― E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“No, mother; no. She was really keen on Italy. This travel is quite a crisis for her.” He found the situation full of whimsical romance: there was something half attractive, half repellent in the thought of this vulgar woman journeying to places he loved and revered. Why should she not be transfigured? The same had happened to the Goths.”
― E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“Italy is such a delightful place to live in if you happen to be a man. There one may enjoy that exquisite luxury of Socialism — that true Socialism which is based not on equality of income or character, but on the equality of manners.”
― E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“For the dead, who seem to take away so much, really take with them nothing that is ours. The passion they have aroused lives after them, easy to transmute or to transfer, but well-nigh impossible to destroy.”
― E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“You are wonderful!" he said gravely. "Oh, you appreciate me!" she burst out again. "I wish you didn't. You appreciate us all—see good in all of us. And all the time you are dead—dead—dead. Look, why aren't you angry?" She came up to him, and then her mood suddenly changed, and she took hold of both his hands. "You are so splendid, Mr. Herriton, that I can't bear to see you wasted. I can't bear—she has not been good to you—your mother." "Miss Abbott, don't worry over me. Some people are born not to do things. I'm one of them; I never did anything at school or at the Bar. I came out to stop Lilia's marriage, and it was too late. I came out intending to get the baby, and I shall return an 'honourable failure.' I never expect anything to happen now, and so I am never disappointed. You would be surprised to know what my great events are. Going to the theatre yesterday, talking to you now—I don't suppose I shall ever meet anything greater. I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it—and I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil. I don't die—I don't fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there. You are quite right; life to me is just a spectacle, which—thank God, and thank Italy, and thank you—is now more beautiful and heartening than it has ever been before.”
― E. M. Forster, WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD Annotated book

“And I do believe that Italy really purifies and ennobles all who visit her. She is the school as well as the playground of the world.”
― E. M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“It is well to be remembered with love. It is not so very dreadful to be forgotten entirely. But if we shall resent anything on earth at all, we shall resent the consecration of a deserted room.”
― E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“The wonderful things are over”
― E.M. Forster, The Life of Timon of Athens

“For the barrier of language is sometimes a blessed barrier, which only lets pass what is good. Or—to put the thing less cynically—we may be better in new clean words, which have never been tainted by our pettiness or vice.”
― E. M. Forster, WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD Annotated book

“And don't, let me beg you, go with that awful tourist idea that Italy's only a museum of antiquities and art. Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvellous than the land”
― E. M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“This episode, which she thought so sordid, and which was so tragic for him, remained supremely beautiful. To such a height was he lifted that without regret he could now have told her that he was her worshipper too. But what was the use of telling her? For all the wonderful things had happened.
'Thank you,' was all that he permitted himself. 'Thank you for everything.”
― E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it—and I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil.”
― E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread

“She was appallingly narrow, but her consciousness of wider things gave to her narrowness a pathetic charm.”
― E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread