Personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever, and not this outer life of telegrams and anger.
E. M. ForsterRead
There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Every belief system carries the potential for suffering and sacrifice that its adherents may eventually have to confront.
E. M. Forster's quote highlights the notion that behind every creed or belief, there exists a profound and often challenging truth that could demand significant personal sacrifice from its followers. This acknowledgment reflects the complex relationship between belief and personal experience, reminding us that devotion often comes with hardships and the possibility of suffering.
Themes
CreedSufferingSacrificeBeliefWorship
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about religious commitments during a seminar.
More from E. M. Forster
All quotes βA poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.
E. M. ForsterRead
One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.
E. M. ForsterRead
Oxford is Oxford: not a mere receptacle for youth, like Cambridge. Perhaps it wants its inmates to love it rather than to love one another.
E. M. ForsterRead
The fact is we can only love what we know personally. And we cannot know much. In public affairs, in the rebuilding of civilization, something less dramatic and emotional is needed, namely tolerance.
E. M. ForsterRead
One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.
E. M. ForsterRead
Similar quotes
Indeed, I cannot think why the whole bed of the ocean is not one solid mass of oysters, so prolific the creatures seem. Ah, I am wandering! Strange how the brain controls the brain! What was I saying, Watson?
Arthur Conan DoyleRead
Whatever is unnamed, undepicted in images, whatever is omitted from biography, censored in collections of letters, whatever is misnamed as something else, made difficult-to-come-by, whatever is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under an inadequate or lying language - this will become, not merely unspoken, but unspeakable.
Adrienne RichRead
We are born into a world in which sexual possibilities are narrowly circumscribed. . . . We are programmed by the culture as surely as rats are programmed to make the arduous way through the scientist's maze, and that programming operates on every level of choice and action.
Andrea DworkinRead
I tend to identify with my roles to such an extent that I appear to be totally convinced about certain statements that, in real life, I would never believe in.
Bruno GanzRead
An honest man's the noblest work of God.
Alexander PopeRead
The aging process is not gradual or gentle. It rushes up, pushes you over, and runs off laughing. No one should grow old who isn't ready to appear ridiculous.
John MortimerRead