Personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever, and not this outer life of telegrams and anger.
E. M. ForsterRead
They had nothing in common but the English language.
Interpretation
The quote highlights how shared language can connect people despite differences.
E. M. Forster's quote suggests that even when individuals have vastly different backgrounds, beliefs, or cultures, the ability to communicate in a common language, such as English, can create a bond between them. This emphasizes the importance of language as a bridge that fosters understanding and connection among diverse groups.
In practice
Using this quote in a presentation about the importance of language in multicultural settings.
Personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever, and not this outer life of telegrams and anger.
A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.
One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.
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.
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.
One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.
Many couples, many people, are not living with real human beings, but with their ghosts. Who has not followed for years the spell of a particular tone of voice, from voice to voice, as the fetishist follows a beautiful foot, scarcely seeing the woman herself? A voice, a mouth, an eye, all stemming from the original fountain of our first desire, directing it, enslaving us, until we choose to unravel the fatal web and free ourselves.
Saying hello doesn't have an ROI. It's about building relationships.
In the course of a marriage, one accommodates the other.
Through Mary, we come to her Son more easily.
A successful marriage is a decision. You decide it's going to work. You can't always be there, but you have to be there enough. And you have to make sure you are where you're needed most.
Every couple needs to argue now and then. Just to prove that the relationship is strong enough to survive. Long-term relationships, the ones that matter, are all about weathering the peaks and the valleys.
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