Personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever, and not this outer life of telegrams and anger.
E. M. ForsterRead
What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Great literature changes readers, aligning them more closely with the experiences and insights of its authors.
E. M. Forster's quote highlights the transformative power of literature, suggesting that when one engages deeply with literary works, they undergo a change that brings them closer to the author's perspective and understanding of the world. This exchange enriches the reader's own life and thoughts, making literature an essential part of personal and intellectual growth.
Themes
LiteratureTransformationReadingUnderstandingGrowth
In practice
Example use cases
During a book club discussion, one might say: 'As E. M. Forster pointed out, great literature transforms us, enabling deeper empathy.'
More from E. M. Forster
All quotes βA 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
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A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.
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Ah yes, the paradox of publicity is that even as we do it, we know it's killing off the chance of another reader happening across our book in the ideal state of innocence.
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The dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.
Walt WhitmanRead
Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you'll behave to other people.
Barbara KingsolverRead