How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
She was no dazzling executante; her runs were not at all like strings of pearls, and she struck no more right notes than was suitable for one of her age and situation. Nor was she the passionate young lady, who performs so tragically on a summer's evening with the window open. Passion was there, but it could not be easily labelled; it slipped between love and hatred and jealousy, and all the furniture of the pictorial style. And she was tragical only in the sense that she was great, for she loved to play on the side of Victory. Victory of what and over what—that is more than the words of daily life can tell us. But that some sonatas of Beethoven are written tragic no one can gainsay; yet they can triumph or despair as the player decides, and Lucy had decided that they should triumph (3.2).
Here we catch our first real glimpse of what Lucy is really like in her heart of hearts. Music is her only outlet for the feelings she usually hides beneath a shell of politeness; we can see from this dramatic passage of description that she’s got a lot beneath the surface.
Quote #5
For her taste was catholic, and she extended uncritical approval to every well-known name (4.5).
This little one-liner, easily overlooked, is a sarcastic poke by Forster at the stereotypically bourgeois habit of admiring only things that are widely acknowledged as admirable. Nota bene: “catholic” in this sense doesn’t mean Catholic, as in the Church (though that does kind of apply, since the art Lucy’s looking at is religious). Instead, “catholic” means broad and open.
Quote #6
“No, I want to be really truthful. I am a little to blame. I had silly thoughts. The sky, you know, was gold, and the ground all blue, and for a moment he looked like some one in a book.”
“In a book?”
“Heroes—gods—the nonsense of schoolgirls” (7.27-9).
George, the subject of this discussion, is compared to a hero or god of antiquity, which casts him in a dashingly romantic light. Oh, be still our beating hearts!