Then this spring, my book-group read Passage to India together. This past fall, I re-read Forster’s major novels with other adults in a Learning in Retirement class. Live in fragments no longer.” It’s not a recommendation to connect with other human beings all the time-in fact, I suspect, Forster would suggest that we often have to disconnect from more superficial forms of contact-but about becoming a more whole, less fragmented person. Here’s the full passage in Howards End: “Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. (It’s true even for those like me, who read his novels in my twenties with real pleasure.) By itself, the phrase sounds trite and way too earnest, in the gag-producing vein of Richard Bach’s “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” In the context of Forster’s life and novels, though, “only connect” conveys grit, depth, and complexity. “Only connect”-that’s as much as many of us remember about E.
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