Personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever, and not this outer life of telegrams and anger.
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
We can only love what we truly understand, which requires knowledge and familiarity, advocating for tolerance in wider societal matters.
E. M. Forster's quote emphasizes that genuine love stems from personal knowledge and understanding; however, in broader contexts such as public affairs and societal rebuilding, this deep emotional connection is often impractical. Therefore, tolerance becomes a necessary and pragmatic approach that allows us to coexist and work together despite knowing only fragments of each other's experiences.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about community cohesion, this quote can highlight the importance of understanding each other to foster love and tolerance.
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.
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.
One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.
Don't be mysterious; there isn't the time.
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Observe your environment. Invite people into your life that don't look like you or think like you
Part of the puzzle, surely, lies in the disconnect between official rhetoric and lived realities. Americans are constantly extolling “traditions”; litanies to family values are at the center of every politician’s discourse. And yet the culture of America is extremely corrosive of family life, indeed of all traditions except those redefined as “identities” that fit in the larger patterns of distinctiveness, cooperation, and openness to innovation.
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It doesn't matter what the other is being, doing, having, saying, wanting, demanding. It doesn't matter what the other is thinking, expecting, planning. It only matters what you are being in relationship to that.