Personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever, and not this outer life of telegrams and anger.
E. M. ForsterRead
It is the vice of a vulgar mind to be thrilled by bigness, to think that a thousand square miles are a thousand times more wonderful than one square mile, and that a million square miles are almost the same as heaven.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote criticizes the tendency of some people to value large things over smaller, equally significant ones.
E. M. Forster's quote emphasizes that a shallow appreciation for grandeur can be misleading. It suggests that a vulgar mind values quantity, such as size and scale, over quality and depth. Instead of recognizing the intrinsic worth of smaller experiences or entities, these minds get easily swayed by superficial, grandiose concepts, mistaking sheer scale for superiority.
Themes
VulgarityMindBignessValueQuality
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about consumerism and the value we place on material possessions.
More from E. M. Forster
All quotes →A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.
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One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.
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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
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