Personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever, and not this outer life of telegrams and anger.
E. M. ForsterRead
Words deserted him immediately. He could only speak when he was not asked to.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that he struggles with communication when put under pressure to speak.
This quote by E. M. Forster reflects the complexities of human communication, particularly how anxiety or pressure can inhibit one's ability to express themselves. It illustrates the idea that sometimes silence can be more comfortable or even necessary, especially when the expectation to articulate thoughts becomes overwhelming.
Themes
CommunicationSilenceExpressivenessAnxietyPressure
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be cited in a discussion on public speaking anxieties.
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
Similar quotes
Parting is inevitably painful, even for a short time. It's like an amputation, I feel a limb is being torn off, without which I shall be unable to function. And yet, once it is done... life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid and fuller than before.
Anne Morrow LindberghRead
She said that these were things all women knew yet seldom spoke of. Lastly she said that if women were drawn to rash men it was only that in their secret hearts they knew that a man who would not kill for them was of no use at all.
Cormac MccarthyRead
A lot of my personality was informed by feeling very different in the world I grew up in, feeling that I didn't fully belong, that my parents didn't belong.
Jhumpa LahiriRead
Man survives earthquakes, epidemics, the horrors of disease, and all the agonies of the soul, but for all time his tormenting tragedy is, and will be, the tragedy of the bedroom.
Leo TolstoyRead
We each have been betrayed. Let yourself picture and remember the many ways this is true. Feel the sorrow you have carried from this past. Now sense that you can release this burden of pain by gradually extending forgiveness as your heart is ready.
Jack KornfieldRead
Anger repressed can poison a relationship as surely as the crudest words.
Joyce BrothersRead