Personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever, and not this outer life of telegrams and anger.
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.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the unique character of Oxford as a place that fosters a deep love for its environment and culture rather than focusing solely on interpersonal relationships.
E. M. Forster's quote reflects on the distinct and profound nature of the Oxford experience, suggesting that the university is more than just a place for youthful camaraderie. Instead, it encourages an emotional attachment to its rich heritage and intellectual wealth, proposing that the love for the institution itself may take precedence over the love between individuals within it.
In practice
During a speech at the university alumni gathering.
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.
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.
Don't be mysterious; there isn't the time.
International educational exchange is the most significant current project designed to continue the process of humanizing mankind to the point, we would hope, that men can learn to live in peace-eventually even to cooperate in constructive activities rather than compete in a mindless contest of mutual destruction....We must try to expand the boundaries of human wisdom, empathy and perception, and there is no way of doing that except through education.
Books, books, books in all their aspects, in form and spirit, their physical selves and what reading releases from their hieroglyphic pages, in their sight and smell, in their touch and feel to the questing hand, and in the intellectual music which they sing to the thoughtful brain and loving heart, books are to me the best of all symbols, the realest of all reality.
Let's face it. No kid in high school feels as though they fit in.
I hope to instill, in every child I meet, my love and enthusiasm for reading and stories.
This pleased Onyango, for to him knowledge was the source of all the white man's power, and he wanted to make sure that his son was as educated as any white man.
(...) being right all the time acquires a huge importance in education, and there is this terror of being wrong. The ego is so tied to being right that later on in life you are reluctant to accept that you are ever wrong, because you are defending not the idea but your self-esteem. (...) this terror of being wrong means that people have enormous difficulties in changing ideas.
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