Maurice Em Forster Quotes

I am an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.

You confuse what's important with what's impressive.

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

You do care a little for me, I know... but nothing to speak of, and you don't love me. I was yours once till death if you'd cared to keep me, but I'm someone else's now... and he's mine in a way that shocks you, but why don't you stop being shocked, and attend to your own happiness.

Did you ever dream you had a friend, Alec? Someone to last your whole life and you his. I suppose such a thing can’t really happen outside sleep.

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

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.

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

Because I say so little you think I don't feel. I care a lot.

I swear from the bottom of my heart I want to be healed. I want to be like other men, not this outcast whom nobody wants.

There has been, is, and always will be every conceivable type of person.  

Words deserted him immediately. He could only speak when he was not asked to.

... And now we shan't be parted no more, and that's finished.

I have almost completed a long novel, but it is unpublishable until my death and England's.

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 forever - and he's mine in a way that shocks you, but why don't you stop being shocked, and attend to your own happiness?

At times he entertained the dream. Two men can defy the world.

Why children?' he asked. 'Why always children? For love to end where it begins is far more beautiful, and Nature knows it.

He knew that loneliness was poisoning him, so that he grew viler as well as more unhappy.

I should have gone through life half awake if you'd had the decency to leave me alone. Awake intellectually, yes, and emotionally in a way; but here--" He pointed with his pipe stem to his heart; and both smiled. "Perhaps we woke up one another. I like to think that anyway.

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.

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 . . . .

Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood.

He educated Maurice, or rather his spirit educated Maurice's spirit, for 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.

England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.

You can when you mean to,' said Maurice gently. 'You can do anything once you know what it is.

When love flies it is remembered not as love but as something else. Blessed are the uneducated, who forget it entirely, and are never conscious of folly or pruriency in the past, of long aimless conversations.

There was something better in life than this rub­bish, if only he could get to it—love—nobility—big spaces where passion clasped peace, spaces no science could reach, but they existed for ever, full of woods some of them, and arched with majestic sky and a friend. . .

He had awoken too late for happiness, but not for strength, and could feel an austere joy, as of a warrior who is homeless but stands fully armed.

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

They had never struggled, and only a struggle twists sentimentality and lust together into love.

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

A slow nature such as Maurice's appears insensitive, for it needs time even to feel.

It's miles worse for you than that; I'm in love with your gamekeeper.

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 . . . .

You mean that a Frenchman could share with a friend and yet not go to prison?’ ‘Share? Do you mean unite? If both are of age and avoid public indecency, certainly.’ ‘Will the law ever be that in England?’ ‘I doubt it. England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.

You care for me a little bit, I do think," he admitted, "but I can't hang all my life on a little bit. You don't. You hang yours on Anne. 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.

He lived on, miserable and misunderstood, as before, and increasingly lonely. One cannot write those words too often: Maurice’s loneliness: it increased.

Every man has somewhere about him some belief for which he'd die. Only isn't it improbable that your parents and guardians told it to you? If there is one won't it be part of your own flesh and spirit?

The past is devoid of meaning like the present, and a refuge for cowards.

He had brought out the man in Alec, and now it was Alec’s turn to bring out the hero in him

But books meant so much for him he forgot that they were a bewilderment to others.

He would not deceive himself so much. He would not – and this was the test – pretend to care about women when the only sex that attracted him was his own. He loved men and always had loved them. He longed to embrace them and mingle his being with theirs. Now that the man who returned his love had been lost, he admitted this.

Beautiful conventions received them--while beyond the barrier Maurice wandered, the wrong words on his lips, the wrong desires in his heart, and his arms full of air.

I have always been like the Greeks and didn’t know.

Madness is not for everyone, but Maurice's proved the thunderbolt that dispels the clouds. The storm had been working up not for three days as he supposed, but for six years. It had brewed in the insecurities of being where no eye pierces, his surroundings had thickened it. It had burst and he had not died. The brilliancy of day was around him, he stood upon the mountain range that overshadows youth, he saw.

Maurice was scandalized, horrified. He was shocked to the bottom of his suburban soul....

They must live outside class, without relations or money; they must work and stick to each other till death. But England belonged to them. That, besides companionship, was their reward. Her air and sky were theirs, not the timorous millions' who own stuffy little boxes, but never their own souls.

Too late... everything's always too late.

The ethereal past had blinded him, and the highest happiness he could dream was a return to it.

Science is better than sympathy, if only it is science.

I had no right to move out of my books and music, which was what I did when I met you

People turned out to be alive. Hitherto he had supposed that they were what he pretended to be - flat pieces of cardboard stamped with a conventional design… there came by no process of reason a conviction that they were human beings with feelings akin to his own.

... and someone he scarcely knew moved towards him and knelt beside him and whispered, 'Sir, was you calling out for me? ... Sir, I know ... I know,' and touched him.

... I since cricket match do long to talk with one of my arms around you, then place both arms round you and share with you, the above now seems sweeter to me than words can say.

Fed by neither Heaven nor by Earth he was going forward . . . He hadn't a God or 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 Heavan.

I was yours once till death if you 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?

A happy ending was imperative

He didn’t care for Clive [anymore], but he could suffer from him.

If you introduce the human figure you at once arouse either disgust or desire.

He never even thought of tenderness and emotion; his considerations about Durham remained cold. Durham didn't dislike him, he was sure. That was all he wanted. One thing at a time. He didn't so much as have hopes, for hope distracts, and he had a great deal to see to.

The stories of Harmonius and Aristogeiton, of Phaedrus of the Theban Band were well enough for those whose hearts were empty, but no substitute for life. That Clive should occasionally prefer them puzzled him.

He questioned Maurice, who, when he grasped the point, was understood to reply that deeds are more important than words.

Oh, Mr Hall, what an ungallant remark. Look at her lovely hair.' 'I like short hair best.' 'Why?' 'Because I can stroke it-' and he began to cry.

He longed for smut, but heard little and contributed less, and his chief indecencies were solitary.

Against my will I have become normal.

When they sat it was nearly always in the same position – Maurice in a chair, and Durham at his feet, leaning against him. In the world of their friends this attracted no notice. Maurice would stroke Durham’s hair.

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.

Indoors was his place and there he'd moulder, a respectable pillar of society who has never had the chance to misbehave.

You care for me a little bit, I do think, but I can't hang all my life on a little bit.

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

Maurice hated cricket. It demanded a snickety neatness he could not supply.

Straight?" He trembled as he asked this supreme question. "Scudder? A little too smart to be straight.

It's a risk, so's everything else, and we'll only live once.

He could control the body; it was the tainted soul that mocked his prayers.

I don't know. I've come to tell you what I did.' Yes, that was the reason of his visit. It was the closing of a book that would never be read again, and better close such a book than leave it lying about to get dirtied. The volume of their past must be restored to its shelf, and here, here was the place, amid darkness and perishing flowers. He owed it to Alec also. He could suffer no mixing of the old with the new. All compromise was perilous, because furtive, and, having finished his confession, he must disappear from the world that had brought him up.

They were his last words, because Maurice had disappeared thereabouts, leaving no trace of his presence except a little pile of the petals of the evening primrose, which mourned from the ground like an expiring fire. To the end of his life Clive was not sure of the exact moment of departure, and with the approach of old age he grew uncertain whether the moment had yet occurred.

I feel to you as Pippa to her fiancé, only far more nobly, far more deeply, body and soul, no starved medievalism of course, only a – a particular harmony of body and soul that I don’t think women have even guessed. But you know.

Conse­quently the Wolfenden recommendations will be indefinitely rejected, police prosecutions will continue and Clive on the bench will continue to sentence Alec in the dock. Maurice may get off.

Belief’s always right.. It’s all right and it’s also unmistakable. Every man has somewhere about him some belief for which he’d die. Only isn’t it improbable that your parents and guardians told it to you? If there is one won’t it be part of your own flesh and spirit?

It’s a chance in a thousand we’ve met, we’ll never have the chance again and you know it. Stay with me. We love each other.

The atheist is nearer the Kingdom of Heaven than the hellenist.

from the middle-middle classes, whose highest desire seemed shelter – continuous shelter – not a lair in the darkness to be reached against fear, but shelter everywhere and always, until the existence of earth and sky is forgotten, shelter from poverty and disease and violence and impoliteness; and consequently from joy; God slipped this retribution in.

So he was queer, E.M. Forster. It wasn't his middle name (that would be 'Morgan'), but it was his orientation, his romping pleasure, his half-secret, his romantic passion. In the long-suppressed novel Maurice the title character blurts out his truth, 'I'm an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.' It must have felt that way when Forster came of sexual age in the last years of the 19th century: seriously risky and dangerously blurt-able. The public cry had caught Wilde, exposed and arrested him, broken him in prison. He was one face of anxiety to Forster; his mother was another. As long as she lived (and they lived together until she died, when he was 66), he couldn't let her know.

He was not sure, but liked it. It recurred when they met suddenly or had been silent. It beckoned to him across intellect, saying, "This is all very well, you're clever, we know—but come!" It haunted him so that he watched for it while his brain and tongue were busy, and when it came he felt himself replying, "I'll come—I didn't know." "You can't help yourself now. You must come." "I don't want to help myself." "Come then." He did come. He flung down all the barriers—not at once, for he did not live in a house that can be destroyed in a day.

The unbeliever has always such a very clear idea as to what Belief ought to be, I wish I had half his certainty.

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—

You can’t build a house on the sand, and passion’s sand. We want bed rock …

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. Given time, it can know and impart ecstasy; given time, it can sink to the heart of Hell.

Yet he was doing a fine thing — proving on how little a soul can exist. Fed neither by Heaven nor by Earth he was going forward, a lamp that would have blown out, were materialism true. 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 suppress any legends about Heaven.

When they parted it was in the ordinary way: neither had an impulse to say anything special. The whole day had been ordinary. Yet it had never come before either of them, nor was it to be repeated.

I, though less optimistic, had supposed that knowledge would bring understanding. We had not realized that what the public loathes in homosexuality is not the thing itself but having to think about it

The idealism and the brutality that ran through boyhood had joined at last, and twined into love. No one might want such love, but he could not feel ashamed of it, because it was "he", neither body or soul, nor body or soul, but "he" working through both.

Quizás nadie quisiese tal amor, pero podía ya no sentirse avergonzado de él, porque aquel amor era "él", no el cuerpo o el alma, no alma y cuerpo, sino "él" viviendo en ambos.

Amaba a los hombres y siempre los había amado. Ansiaba abrazarlos, mezclar con el de ellos su ser. Ahora que había perdido al hombre que correspondía a su amor, admitía aquello.

By God, if you'd split on me to Mr Ducie, I'd have broken you. It might have cost me hundreds, but I've got them, and the police always back my sort against yours. You don't know. We'd have got you into quod, for blackmail, after which — I'd have blown out my brains.' 'Killed yourself? Death?' 'I should have known by that time that I loved you. Too late . . . everything's always too late.

Yes, awfully serious,' remarked Maurice, and rested his hand on Alec's shoulder, so that the fingers touched the back of the neck, doing this merely because he wished to do it, not for another reason.

During this Lent term Maurice came out as a theologian. It was not humbug entirely. He believed that he believed, and felt genuine pain when anything he was accustomed to met criticism—the pain that masquerades among the middle classes as Faith. It was not Faith, being inactive. It gave him no support, no wider outlook. It didn’t exist till opposition touched it, when it ached like a useless nerve.

People turned out to be alive. Hitherto he had supposed that they were what he pretended to be — flat pieces of cardboard stamped with a conventional design — but as he strolled about the courts at night and saw through the windows some men singing and others arguing and others at their books, there came by no process of reason a conviction that they were human beings with feelings akin to his own. He had never lived frankly since Mr Abrahams's school, and despite Dr Barry did not mean to begin; but he saw that while deceiving others he had been deceived, and mistaken them for the empty creatures he wanted them to think he was. No, they too had insides. "But, O Lord, not such an inside as mine.

Durham no podía esperar. La gente los rodeaba, pero con ojos que se habían vuelto intensamente azules murmuró: —Que te amo. Maurice se escandalizó, se horrorizó. Se estremeció hasta las raíces de su alma burguesa, y exclamó:"¡Oh, maldición!" Las palabras, los gestos, surgían de él antes de que pudiera evitarlo.

He held out his hand, Maurice took it, and they knew at that moment the greatest triumph ordinary man can win. Physical love means reaction, being panic in essence, and Maurice saw now how natural it was that their primitive abandonment at Penge should have led to peril. 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. Not as a hero, but as a comrade, had he stood up to the bluster, and found childishness behind it, and behind that something else.