Quotes · verified word for word in the text
A Room with a View quotes
13 quotes from A Room with a View by E. M. Forster. Source: Project Gutenberg e-text #2641 (public domain in the USA), the text this site’s reader shows. Each quote is copied exactly from that text and links to its passage in the reader; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against the reader’s text.
It is so difficult—at least, I find it difficult—to understand people who speak the truth.
— Spoken by a character · I. The Bertolini
Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome “nerves” or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire.
The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected.
“I have a view, I have a view.”
— Spoken by a character · I. The Bertolini
No, he is not tactful; yet, have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet at the same time—beautiful?
— Spoken by a character · I. The Bertolini
“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.”
— Spoken by a character · XV. The Disaster Within
Passion should believe itself irresistible. It should forget civility and consideration and all the other curses of a refined nature. Above all, it should never ask for leave where there is a right of way.
Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them.
— Spoken by a character · II. In Santa Croce with No Baedeker
“One doesn’t come to Italy for niceness,” was the retort; “one comes for life. Buon giorno! Buon giorno!”
— Spoken by a character · II. In Santa Croce with No Baedeker
Make him realize that by the side of the everlasting Why there is a Yes—a transitory Yes if you like, but a Yes.
— Spoken by a character · II. In Santa Croce with No Baedeker
The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul.
Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there?
— Spoken by a character · VI. The Reverend Arthur Beebe, the Reverend Cuthbert Eager, Mr. Emerson, Mr. George Emerson, Miss Eleanor Lavish, Miss Charlotte Bartlett, and Miss Lucy Honeychurch Drive Out in Carriages to See a View; Italians Drive Them
‘Don’t go fighting against the Spring.’
— Spoken by a character · VI. The Reverend Arthur Beebe, the Reverend Cuthbert Eager, Mr. Emerson, Mr. George Emerson, Miss Eleanor Lavish, Miss Charlotte Bartlett, and Miss Lucy Honeychurch Drive Out in Carriages to See a View; Italians Drive Them