Personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever, and not this outer life of telegrams and anger.
E. M. ForsterRead
Only people who have been allowed to practise freedom can have the grown-up look in their eyes.
Interpretation
True maturity and understanding of life come from experiencing freedom.
E. M. Forster's quote suggests that the experiences of freedom are crucial for personal growth and maturity. Those who have not experienced this freedom may lack the depth and understanding that comes with it, which is often reflected in their demeanor and perspective on life.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about personal development during a leadership seminar.
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.
Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.
There are no makeovers in my books. The ugly duckling does not become a beautiful swan. She becomes a confident duck able to take charge of her own life and problems.
Build a cell inside your mind, from which you can never flee.
Suffering is unbearable if you arenβt certain that God is for you and with you.
Deep in the soul, below pain, below all the distraction of life, is a silence vast and grand - an infinite ocean of calm, which nothing can disturb; Nature's own exceeding peace, which "passes understanding". That which we seek with passionate longing, here and there, upward and outward; we find at last within ourselves.
The best that can be said of my life so far is that it has been industrious, and the best that can be said of me is that I have not pretended to what I was not.
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