A Room with a View Quotes

“An engagement is so potent a thing that sooner or later it reduces all who speak of it to this state of cheerful awe.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“They chose to regard it as a miraculous preservation.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“Liking one person is an extra reason for liking another.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“Vagueness spurred him into knight errantry.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“A matter neither sensual nor sensational is ignored by the art of today.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“Travel was a species of warfare.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“Lucy was slow to follow what people said, but quick enough to detect what they meant. She missed Cecil's epigram, but grasped the feeling that prompted it.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“[S]he might yet reveal depths of strangeness, if not of meaning.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“For all his culture, Cecil was an ascetic at heart, and nothing in his love became him like the leaving of it.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“Like his sister and like most young people, he was naturally attracted by the idea of equality, and the undeniable fact that there are different kinds of Emersons annoyed him beyond measure.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“Since she could not unravel the tangle, she must take care not to re-enter it.”
― E. M. Forster, Room with a View, A

“Appearing thus late in the story, Cecil must be at once described. He was medieval. Like a Gothic statue.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“Pray don’t waste time mourning over me. There’s enough sorrow in the world, isn’t there, without trying to invent it. Good-bye.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“We know that we come from the winds, and that we shall return to them; that all life is perhaps a knot, a tangle, a blemish in the eternal smoothness.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“En ese preciso momento el camino se abría y con una exclamación Lucy se encontró fuera del bosque. Luz y belleza la envolvía. Había ido a dar a una pequeña terraza que estaba cubierta de violetas de un extremo a otro.
- ¡Valor! -exclamó su compañero, erguido a unos seis pies de altura respecto a ella-. Valor y amor.
Ella no respondió. A sus pies el suelo se cortaba bruscamente dando paso a la panorámica. Violetas que se agrupaban alrededor de arroyos y corrientes y cascadas, regando la vertiente de la colina de azul, arremolinándose alrededor de los troncos de los árboles, formando lagunas en los agujeros, cubriendo la hierba con manchas de espuma azulada. Jamás volvería a haberlas en tal profusión. La terraza era el principio de lo bello, la fuente original donde la belleza hacía brotar agua que iba a la tierra.
De pie en el margen, como un nadador que se prepara, estaba el buen hombre. Pero no era el buen hombre que ella había pensado, y estaba solo.
George se había vuelto al oír su llegada. Por un momento la contempló, como si fuera alguien que bajaba de los cielos. Vio la radiante alegría en su cara, las flores que batían su vestido en olas azuladas. Los arbustos que la encerraban por encima. Subió rápidamente hasta donde estaba ella y la besó.
Antes de que ella pudiera decir algo, casi antes de que pudiera sentir nada, una voz llamó: ¡Lucy!, ¡Lucy!, ¡Lucy!. La señorita Bartlett, que era una mancha oscura en la panorámica, había roto el silencio de la vida.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“He was driven to use the prerogatives of his profession, to act the parson.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“But Italy worked some marvel in her. It gave her light...”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“She did not acknowledge that her brain was warped, for the brain itself must assist in that acknowledgement, and she was disordering the very instruments of life.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“I don’t understand,” she said at last. She understood very well, but she no longer wished to be absolutely truthful. “How are you going to stop him talking about it?” “I have a feeling that talk is a thing he will never do.” “I, too, intend to judge him charitably. But unfortunately I have met the type before. They seldom keep their exploits to themselves.” “Exploits?” cried Lucy, wincing under the horrible plural. “My poor dear, did you suppose that this was his first? Come here and listen to me. I am only gathering it from his own remarks. Do you remember that day at lunch when he argued with Miss Alan that liking one person is an extra reason for liking another?” “Yes,” said Lucy, whom at the time the argument had pleased. “Well, I am no prude. There is no need to call him a wicked young man, but obviously he is thoroughly unrefined. Let us put it down to his deplorable antecedents and education, if you wish. But we are no farther on with our question. What do you propose to do?” An idea rushed across Lucy’s brain, which, had she thought of it sooner and made it part of her, might have proved victorious. “I propose to speak to him,” said she. Miss Bartlett uttered a cry of genuine alarm.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“Beautiful?” said Miss Bartlett, puzzled at the word. “Are not beauty and delicacy the same?”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“I do not consider her choice of a piece happy. Beethoven is so usually simple and direct in his appeal that it is sheer perversity to choose a thing like that, which, if anything, disturbs.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“There was no one even to tell her which, of all the sepulchral slabs that paved the nave and transepts, was the one that was really beautiful, the one that had been most praised by Mr. Ruskin. Then the pernicious charm of Italy worked on her, and, instead of acquiring information, she began to be happy.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“Lucy was slow to follow what people said, but quick enough to detect what they meant.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome “nerves” or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire. She”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“Your soul, dear Lucy! I hate the word now, because of all the cant with which superstition has wrapped it round. But we have souls, and I see you ruining yours. I cannot bear it.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“The world,” she thought, “is certainly full of beautiful things, if only I could come across them.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“He is rather a peculiar man." Again he hesitated, and then said gently: "I think he would not take advantage of your acceptance, nor expect you to show gratitude. He has the merit—if it is one—of saying exactly what he means. He has rooms he does not value, and he thinks you would value them. He no more thought of putting you under an obligation than he thought of being polite. It is so difficult—at least, I find it difficult—to understand people who speak the truth.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“There was simply the sense that she had found wings, and meant to use them.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“There is a certain amount of kindness, just as there is a certain amount of light,” he continued in measured tones. “We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won’t do harm—yes, choose a place where you won’t do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome 'nerves' or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room With A View