E.M. Forster "A Room with a View"

Published in 1908, this social comedy follows the young Lucy Honeychurch in her soujourn in Florence and the consequences she carries back to England with her.

Excerpts:

“the ladies bought some hot chestnut paste out of a little shop, because it looked so typical. It tasted partly of the paper in which it was wrapped, partly of hair-oil, partly of the great unknown.” – p. 18

“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 praised by Mr. Ruskin. Then the pernicious charm of Italy worked on her, and, instead of acquiring information, she began to be happy.” – p. 19

“Evening approached while they chatted; the air became brighter; the colours on the trees and hills were purified, and the Arno lost its muddy solidity and began to twinkle.” –p. 36

“There is at times a magic in identity of position; it is one of the things that have suggested to us eternal comradeship.” – p. 41

“The river was a lion that morning in strength, voice and colour.” – p. 44

“The Piazza Signoria is too stony to be brilliant. It has no grass, no flowers, no frescoes, no glittering walls of marble or comforting patches of ruddy brick. By an odd chance – unless we believe in a presiding genius of place – the statues that relieve its severity suggest, not the innocence of childhood nor the glorious bewilderment of youth, but the conscious achievements of maturity. Perseus and Judith, Hercules and Thusnelda, they have done or suffered something, and, though they are immortal, immortality has come to them after experience, not before. Here, not only in the solitude of Nature, might a hero meet a goddess, or a heroine a god.” – p. 54

“From her feet the ground sloped sharply into the view, and violets ran down in rivulets and streams and cataracts, irrigating the hillside with blue, eddying round the tree stems, collecting in pools in the hollows, covering the grass with spots of azure foam.” - p. 63

“That day she had seemed a typical tourist – shrill, crude, and gaunt with travel. But Italy worked some marvel in her. It gave her light, and – which he held more precious – it gave her shadow. Soon he detected in her a wonderful reticence. She was like a woman of Leonardo da Vinci’s, whom we love not so much for herself as for the things that she will not tell us. The things are assuredly not of this life; no woman of Leonardo’s could have anything so vulgar as a ‘story.’ She did develop most wonderfully day by day.”
– p. 83

“Of course, he despised the world as a whole; every thoughtful man should; it is almost a test of refinement. But he was sensitive to the successive particles of it which he encountered.” – p. 87

“Inglese Italianato, e un diavolo incarnato” – p. 91

“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. Why could he not do as any labourer or navy – nay, as any young man behind the counter would have done? He recast the scene. Lucy was standing flower-like by the water; he rushed up and took her in his arms; she rebuked him, permitted him, and revered him ever after for his manliness. For he believed that women revere men for their manliness.” – p.101

“She might be forgetting her Italy, but she was noticing more things in her England. One could play a new game with the view, and try to find in its innumerable folds some town or village that would do for Florence.” – p. 145

“Italy is heroic, but Greece is godlike or devilish – I am not sure which, and in either case absolutely out of our suburban focus.” – p. 166

“I taught him to trust in love. I said, ‘When love comes, that is reality.’ I said, ‘Passion does not blind. No. Passion is sanity, and the woman you love, she is the only person you will ever really understand.’” – p. 183

“You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.” – p. 189

E.M. Forster, "A Room with a View" with introduction and notes by Malcolm Bradbury. 2000, Penguin Books.