Ford Madox Ford Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“Higher than the beasts, lower than the angels, stuck in our idiot Eden.”
-- Ford Madox Ford -
“If for nine years I have possessed a goodly apple that is rotten at the core and discover its rottenness only in nine years and six months less four days, isn't it true to say that for nine years I possessed a goodly apple?”
-- Ford Madox FordSource : Ford Madox Ford (2015). “The Good Soldier”, p.6, Booklassic
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“The instances of honesty that one comes across in this world are just as amazing as the instances of dishonesty. After forty-five years of mixing with one's kind, one ought to have acquired the habit of being able to know something about one's fellow beings. But one doesn't”
-- Ford Madox FordSource : Ford Madox Ford (2015). “The Good Soldier”, p.30, Booklassic
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“For the judging of contemporary literature the only test is one's personal taste. If you much like a new book, you must call it literature even though you find no other soul to agree with you, and if you dislike a book you must declare that it is not literature though a million voices should shout you that you are wrong. The ultimate decision will be made by Time.”
-- Ford Madox FordSource : Ford Madox Ford (1938). “The March of Literature: From Confucius' Day to Our Own”, p.11, Dalkey Archive Press
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“The world is full of places to which I want to return”
-- Ford Madox FordSource : Ford Madox Ford (2003). “The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion”, p.43, Broadview Press
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“Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.”
-- Ford Madox Ford -
“Only two classes of books are of universal appeal. The very best and the very worst.”
-- Ford Madox FordSource : Joseph Conrad pt. 3, sec. 1 (1924)
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“Yes, a war is inevitable. Firstly, there's you fellows who can't be trusted. And then there's the multitude who mean to have bathrooms and white enamel. Millions of them; all over the world. Not merely here. And there aren't enough bathrooms and white enamel in the world to go round.”
-- Ford Madox Ford -
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“What the artist wishes to do — as far as you are concerned — is to take you out of yourself. As far as he is concerned, he wishes to express himself.”
-- Ford Madox Ford -
“The object of the novelist is to keep the reader entirely oblivious of the fact that the author exists - even of the fact he is reading a book.”
-- Ford Madox FordSource : Ford Madox Ford (1964). “Critical Writings of Ford Madox Ford”, p.76, U of Nebraska Press
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“We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist. So, for a time, if such a passion come to fruition, the man will get what he wants. He will get the moral support, the encouragement, the relief from the sense of loneliness, the assurance of his own worth. But these things pass away; inevitably they pass away as the shadows pass across sundials. It is sad, but it is so. The pages of the book will become familiar; the beautiful corner of the road will have been turned too many times. Well, this is the saddest story.”
-- Ford Madox FordSource : Ford Madox Ford (2003). “The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion”, p.125, Broadview Press
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“Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has the wrong thing.”
-- Ford Madox FordSource : Ford Madox Ford (2015). “The Good Soldier”, p.190, Booklassic
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“Ford's last Fifth Queen novel is amazing. The whole cycle is a noble conception.”
-- Ford Madox Ford -
“It was an odd friendship, but the oddnesses of friendships are a frequent guarantee of their lasting texture.”
-- Ford Madox FordSource : Ford Madox Ford (2012). “Parade's End”, p.5, Vintage
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“He added that a Frenchman in the train had given him a great sandwich that so stank of garlic that he had been inclined to throw it at the fellow's head.”
-- Ford Madox Ford -
“Pride and reserve are not the only things in life; perhaps they are not even the best things. But if they happen to be your particular virtues you will go all to pieces if you let them go.”
-- Ford Madox FordSource : Ford Madox Ford (2003). “The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion”, p.178, Broadview Press
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“It is not merely that people must die and people must suffer, if not here, then there. But what is dreadful is that the world goes on and people go on being stupidly cruel - in the old ways and all the time.”
-- Ford Madox FordSource : Ford Madox Ford (1923). “The Marsden Case: A Romance”
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“If you hunch your shoulders too long against a storm your shoulders will grow bowed.…”
-- Ford Madox Ford -
“In every man there are two minds that work side by side, the one checking the other; thus emotion stands against reason, intellect corrects passion and first impressions act a little, but very little, before quick reflection.”
-- Ford Madox Ford -
“Damn it all, it's the first duty of a soldier - it's the first duty of all Englishmen - to be able to tell a good lie in answer to a charge.”
-- Ford Madox FordSource : Ford Madox Ford (2012). “Parade's End”, p.77, Vintage
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“The first thing you have to consider when writing a novel is your story, and then your story - and then your story!”
-- Ford Madox FordSource : Ford Madox Ford (2012). “It Was the Nightingale”, p.128, Carcanet
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“[W]e are almost always in one place with our minds somewhere quite other.”
-- Ford Madox FordSource : Ford Madox Ford (2003). “The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion”, p.267, Broadview Press
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“There is no man who loves a woman that does not desire to come to her for the renewal of his courage, for the cutting asunder of his difficulties. And that will be the mainspring of his desire for her. We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist.”
-- Ford Madox FordSource : Ford Madox Ford (2003). “The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion”, p.125, Broadview Press
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“I know nothing - nothing in the world - of the hearts of men. I only know that I am alone - horribly alone.”
-- Ford Madox FordSource : Ford Madox Ford (2015). “The Good Soldier”, p.6, Booklassic
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“...she had always known under her mind and now she confessed it: her agony had been, half of it, because one day he would say farewell to her, like that, with the inflexion of a verb. As, just occasionally, using the word 'we' - and perhaps without intention - he had let her know that he loved her.”
-- Ford Madox Ford -
“The war had made a man of him! It had coarsened him and hardened him. There was no other way to look at it. It had made him reach a point at which he would no longer stand unbearable things.”
-- Ford Madox FordSource : Ford Madox Ford, Graham Greene (1963). “The Bodley Head: Parade's end. Pt.2. No more parades. Pt.3. A man could stand up”
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“You have to wait together - for a week, for a year, for a lifetime, before the final intimate conversation may be attained ... and exhausted. So that ... That in effect was love.”
-- Ford Madox FordSource : Ford Madox Ford (1964). “Parade's End: A man could stand up”
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“He thought he suddenly understood. For the Lincon-shire sergeant-major the word Peace meant that a man could stand up on a hill. For him it meant someone to talk to.”
-- Ford Madox Ford -
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“He wouldn't write a letter because he couldn't without beginning it 'Dear Sylvia' and ending it 'Yours sincerely' or 'truly' or 'affectionately.' He's that sort of precise imbecile. I tell you he's so formal he can't do without all the conventions there are and so truthful he can't use half of them.”
-- Ford Madox Ford -
“But responsibility hardens the heart. It must.”
-- Ford Madox FordSource : Ford Madox Ford (2011). “Parade's End Volume III: A Man Could Stand Up-”, p.203, Carcanet
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