Personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever, and not this outer life of telegrams and anger.
E. M. ForsterRead
There was something better in life than this rubbish, if only he could get to it—love—nobility—big spaces where passion clasped peace, spaces no science could reach, but they existed for ever, full of woods some of them, and arched with majestic sky and a friend. . .
Interpretation
The quote expresses a longing for deeper experiences in life, particularly love and connection, which transcend material concerns.
E. M. Forster's quote reflects a yearning for something more meaningful than the trivialities of everyday life. It emphasizes that true fulfillment can be found in love, nobility, and the beauty of the natural world, which science cannot fully comprehend or define. This longing for profound experiences reminds us of the emotional and spiritual aspects of existence that are often overlooked in a materialistic society.
In practice
During a wedding toast, one could reference this quote to emphasize the importance of love in a person's life.
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.
It was the year they fell into devastating love. Neither one could do anything except think about the other, dream about the other, and wait for letters with the same impatience they felt when they answered them.
In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.
YOU know, I may have to be born again, you see, I have fallen in love with mankind.
For what the lover would, that would the beloved; what she would ask of him that should he go before to grant. Without accord such as this, love is but a bond and a constraint.
The frankest and freest product of the human mind and heart is a love letter; the writer gets his limitless freedom of statement and expression from his sense that no stranger is going to see what he is writing.
In real life, love has to be possible. Even if it is not returned right away, love can only survive when the hope exists that you will be able to win over the person you desire.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.