Quote 4
“It isn't possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. 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” (19.42).
Wise old Mr. Emerson speaks from experience here. Knowing what we do about his deceased wife, we can be sure that he still loves her, and always will. He’s imploring Lucy to admit to the fact that she loves George – because regardless of how much she denies it, she always will.
Quote 5
“[…] let yourself go. You are inclined to get muddled, if I may judge from last night. 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” (2.43).
Though Mr. Emerson doesn’t know Lucy well at all, he’s able to see right through her. He understands that she’s constantly struggling to put aside the thoughts and feelings she doesn’t understand, in order to maintain the image of a proper and polite young lady, even if that’s not who she really is.
Quote 6
“Man has to pick up the use of his functions as he goes along—especially the function of Love” (19.41).
Mr. Emerson rightly comments that we have to learn about life as we go; we’ve seen Lucy learn how to live throughout the novel, and here Forster suggests that the last thing she really has to figure out is Love.