How we cite our quotes: (Chapter. Paragraph)
Quote #7
"Miss Abbott, don't worry over me. Some people are born not to do things. I'm one of them. [...] I never expect anything to happen now, and so I am never disappointed. […] I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it—and I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil. I don't die—I don't fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there. (7.67)
We can't help feeling that the way Philip describes his life is kind of sad and verging on pathetic. Philip is happy with an uneventful existence—he expects nothing, he lets things happen to him (or not happen to him), he's never around for anything important to take place. He never seems to experience FOMO (fear of missing out), and we think he needs a serious lesson in YOLO.
Quote #8
"I wish something would happen to you, my dear friend; I wish something would happen to you." (7.68)
Even Miss Abbott feels sorry for Philip. It would kind of suck to go through life and have nothing happen to you, good or bad. This is Forster's warning to us that an inactive life is a wasted life.
Quote #9
"Every little trifle, for some reason, does seem incalculably important today, and when you say of a thing that 'nothing hangs on it,' it sounds like blasphemy. There's never any knowing—(how am I to put it?)—which of our actions, which of our idlenesses won't have things hanging on it for ever." (7.86)
If we don't know what the consequences of our actions are going to be, should that prevent us from acting? When we don't have a crystal ball that allows us to look into the future, it can be hard to know which course of action is the right one to take. But Forster seems to think that any form of action is better than sitting idly by, refusing to commit one way or another.