Personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever, and not this outer life of telegrams and anger.
E. M. ForsterRead
When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that change is inevitable and that individuals evolve over time, possibly altering their identities.
E. M. Forster's quote reflects the idea that experiences can fundamentally change a person. When we encounter new situations or leave a familiar environment, we often return changed—perhaps in our thoughts, feelings, or perspectives. The essence of who we are can shift with time and experience, highlighting the transformative power of life's journeys and relationships.
Themes
ChangeIdentityTransformationExperiencesGrowth
In practice
Example use cases
During a graduation speech highlighting the transformative journeys of students.
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.
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
Hockey captures the essence of Canadian experience in the New World. In a land so inescapably and inhospitably cold, hockey is the chance of life, and an affirmation that despite the deathly chill of winter we are alive.
Stephen LeacockRead
The point of the journey is not just healing. It's also recovering the truest, most spontaneous, joyful, and creative core of ourselves.
Gloria SteinemRead
The bruises go away, and so does how you hate, and so does the feeling that everything you receive from life is something you have earned.
Jonathan Safran FoerRead
In a faraway land called 'pre-2000,' what Earthlings now call blogging was called 'keeping a diary.' It's hard work to do well. I tried doing it in the early 1990s but had to stop because I no longer had a life - instead I had this thing that generated anecdotes to go into my diary. The diary took over and I had to stop.
Douglas CouplandRead
I focus on very few things in life - my work, my family, my friends. Those things are important to me and I pay good attention to them, and everything else just comes and goes.
Masai UjiriRead
I am a vegetarian because I realized that even little chickens suffer pain and fear, experience a range of feelings and emotions, and are as intelligent as mammals, including dogs, cats, and even some primates.
Paul MccartneyRead