Personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever, and not this outer life of telegrams and anger.
E. M. ForsterRead
Reverence is fatal to literature.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Reverence for literature stifles creativity and originality.
This quote by E. M. Forster suggests that holding literature in too high a regard can impede the creative process. When writers or readers approach literature with excessive reverence, they may become constrained by its traditions and expectations, rather than exploring new ideas and forms that can lead to genuine artistic expression.
Themes
LiteratureCreativityArtistic ExpressionOriginalityReverence
In practice
Example use cases
In a literary discussion about the boundaries of creativity, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of innovation over tradition.
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
There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized or even cured. The only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room, where he can endure the acute stages in private and where food can be poked in to him with a stick.
Robert A. HeinleinRead
Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well.
Sylvia PlathRead
This is the very coinage of your brain: this bodiless creation ecstasy.
William ShakespeareRead
When you want to touch the reader's heart, try to be colder. It gives their grief as it were, a background, against which it stands out in greater relief.
Anton ChekhovRead
She left the web, she left the loom, She made three paces through the room, She saw the water-lily bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She look'd down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror crack'd from side to side; "The curse is come upon me," cried The Lady of Shalott.
Alfred Lord TennysonRead
I've played guitar in so many different styles, and I want to revisit them all.
Jimmy PageRead