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 →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
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That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.
F. Scott FitzgeraldRead
If the worst comes true, and the paper book joins the papyrus scroll and parchment codex in extinction, we will miss, I predict, a number of things about it.
John UpdikeRead
There is no future for e-books, because they are not books. E-books smell like burned fuel.
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No writer must be measured by a word or paragraph. He is to be measured by his work - by the tendency, not of one line, but by the tendency of all.
Robert Green IngersollRead
That the question of likability even exists in literary conversations is odd. It implies that we are engaging in a courtship. When characters are unlikable, they don’t meet our mutable, varying standards. Certainly we can find kinship in fiction, but literary merit shouldn’t be dictated by whether we want to be friends or lovers with those about whom we read.
Roxane GayRead