Quotes from A Passage to India

“Adventures do occur, but not punctually.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“Adventures do occur, but not punctually. Life rarely gives us what we want at the moment we consider appropriate.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence. Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend. There are periods in the most thrilling day during which nothing happens, and though we continue to exclaim 'I do enjoy myself' or 'I am horrified' we are insincere. 'As far as I feel anything, it is enjoyment, horror' - it's no more than that really, and a perfectly adjusted organism would be silent.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“She had come to that state where the horror of the universe and its smallness are both visible at the same time—the twilight of the double vision in which so many elderly people are involved. If this world is not to our taste, well, at all events, there is Heaven, Hell, Annihilation—one or other of those large things, that huge scenic background of stars, fires, blue or black air. All heroic endeavour, and all that is known as art, assumes that there is such a background, just as all practical endeavour, when the world is to our taste, assumes that the world is all. But in the twilight of the double vision, a spiritual muddledom is set up for which no high-sounding words can be found; we can neither act nor refrain from action, we can neither ignore nor respect Infinity.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“Why can't we be friends now?" said the other, holding him affectionately. "It's what I want. It's what you want." But the horses didn't want it — they swerved apart: the earth didn't want it, sending up rocks through which riders must pass single file; the temple, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they emerged from the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn't want it, they said in their hundred voices "No, not yet," and the sky said "No, not there.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“But it struck him that people are not really dead until they are felt to be dead. As long as there is some misunderstanding about them, they possess a sort of immortality.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“I'd far rather leave a thought behind me than a child. Other people can have children.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“Sometimes I think too much fuss is made about marriage. Century after century of carnal embracement and we're still no nearer to understanding one another.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“Excuse my mistakes, realize my limitations. Life is not easy as we know it on the earth.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“Man can learn everything if he will but try.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“One can tip too much as well as too little, indeed the coin that buys the exact truth has not yet been minted.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“Aziz winked at him slowly and said: “...There are many ways of being a man; mine is to express what is deepest in my heart.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“It was unbearable, and he thought again, 'How unhappy I am!' and became happier.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“In Europe life retreats out of the cold, and exquisite fireside myths have resulted—Balder, Persephone—but [in India] the retreat is from the source of life, the treacherous sun, and no poetry adorns it because disillusionment cannot be beautiful. Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form, and India fails to accommodate them.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“God has put us on earth to love our neighbors and to show it, and He is omnipresent, even in India, to see how we are succeeding.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“There are different ways of evil and I prefer mine to yours.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“...for literature had always been a solace for him, something that the ugliness of facts could not spoil.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“It is easy to sympathize at a distance,' said an old gentleman with a beard. 'I value more the kind word that is spoken close to my ear.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“Outside the arch, always there seemed another arch. And beyond the remotest echo, a silence.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“He stretched out his hands as he sang, sadly, because all beauty is sad…The poem had done no ‘good’ to anyone, but it was a passing reminder, a breath from the divine lips of beauty, a nightingale between two worlds of dust. Less explicit than the call to Krishna, it voiced our loneliness nevertheless, our isolation, our need for the Friend who never comes yet is not entirely disproved.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“One touch of regret- not the canny substitute but the true regret from the heart- would have made him a different man, and the British Empire a different institution.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“The issues Miss Quested had raised were so much more important than she was herself that people inevitably forgot her.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“I'm a holy man minus the holiness. Hand that on to your three spies, and tell them to put it in their pipes.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“There is no harm in deceiving society as long as she does not find you out, because it is only when she finds you out that you have harmed her; she is not like a friend or God, who are injured by the mere existence of unfaithfulness.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“At the moment they vanished they were everywhere, the cool benediction of the night descended, the stars sparkled, and the whole universe was a hill.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“What does unhappiness matter when we are all unhappy together?”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“It never bored them to hear words, words; they breathed them with the cool night air, never stopping to analyse; the name of the poet, Hafiz, Hali, Iqbal, was sufficient guarantee. India—a hundred Indias—whispered outside beneath the indifferent moon, but for the time India seemed one and their own, and they regained their departed greatness by hearing its departure lamented, they felt young again because reminded that youth must fly.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

“How indeed is it possible for one human being to be sorry for all the sadness that meets him on the face of the earth, for the pain that is endured not only by men, but by animals and plants, and perhaps by the stones?”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India

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“The last I saw of Percy and Annabeth, their Prius was turning the corner on First Avenue, Percy singing along with Led Zeppelin on the radio, Annabeth laughing at his bad voice.
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“Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blüh'n,
Im dunkeln Laub die Goldorangen glüh'n,
Ein sanfter Wind vom blauen Himmel weht,
Die Myrte still und hoch der Lorbeer steht,

Dahin! Dahin
Möcht' ich mit dir, o mein Geliebter, zieh'n.

Kennst du das Haus? Auf Säulen ruht sein Dach,
Es glänzt der Saal, es schimmert das Gemach,
Und Marmorbilder stehn und seh'n mich an:
Was hat man dir, du armes Kind, getan?
Kennst du es wohl?

Dahin! Dahin
Möcht ich mit dir, o mein Beschützer, zieh'n.

Kennst du den Berg und seinen Wolkensteg?
Das Maultier sucht im Nebel seinen Weg;
In Höhlen wohnt der Drachen alte Brut;
Es stürzt der Fels und über ihn die Flut.
Kennst du ihn wohl?

Dahin! Dahin
Geht unser Weg! o Vater, laß uns zieh'n!”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

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