Personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever, and not this outer life of telegrams and anger.
E. M. ForsterRead
A work of art is never finished. It is merely abandoned.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Art is a continuous process that is never truly complete.
E. M. Forster's quote suggests that the creation of art is an ongoing journey rather than a definitive endpoint. Artists often leave their works at a certain stage, but the potential for modification and reinterpretation continues indefinitely, implying that art evolves over time and reflects the artist's changing vision.
Themes
ArtCreationProcessAbandonmentArtist
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the evolution of art, this quote can highlight the notion that artistic works are fluid.
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
I love performing outside because it's as if the heavens are open and the elements become part of the stage show as well - you know, the wind and the rain and the thunder. It's almost as if there's a sense of invocation in performance.
Florence WelchRead
An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.
George SantayanaRead
Art is the most beautiful of all lies.
Claude DebussyRead
It is a magic book. Words mean things. When you put them together they speak. Yes, sometimes they flatten out and nothing they say is real, and that is one kind of magic. But sometimes a vision will rip up from them and shriek and clank wings clear as the sweat smudge on the paper under your thumb. And that is another kind.
Samuel R. DelanyRead
In music, what is very important is temporality of space and length, based on the breathing space the director gives the music within the film, by separating the music from various elements of reality, like noises, dialogues... That's how you treat music properly, but it doesn't always happen this way. Music is often blamed, but it's not its fault.
Ennio MorriconeRead
It is not reasonable that art should win the place of honor over our great and powerful mother Nature. We have so overloaded the beauty and richness of her works by our inventions that we have quite smothered her.
Michel De MontaigneRead