Ford Madox Quotes

The novel is a medium of profoundly serious investigation into the human case. — Ford Madox Ford

He was presumably a lover. They did things like commanding battalions. And worse! — Ford Madox Ford

I know nothing - nothing in the world - of the hearts of men. I only know that I am alone - horribly alone. — Ford Madox Ford

Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you. — Ford Madox Ford

What did you do on Armistice Night? My beloved is mine and I am his! — Ford Madox Ford

It is of course lawful to learn of the Enemy; but is it sensible? — Ford Madox Ford

The repressions of the passionate drive them mad. — Ford Madox Ford

It is, in fact, asking for trouble if you are more altruist than the society that surrounds you. — Ford Madox Ford

Higher than the beasts, lower than the angels, stuck in our idiot Eden. — Ford Madox Ford

They were simple, earnest people, those early Victorians, and had not yet learnt the trick of avoiding disturbing thoughts and sights. — Ford Madox Ford

Being a miner he sat on his heels more comfortably than on a chair — Ford Madox Ford

What did we want with an Empire! It — Ford Madox Ford

Gentlemen don't earn money. Gentlemen, as a matter of fact, don't do anything. They — Ford Madox Ford

It was as if a man should have jumped out of a frying pan into - a duckpond. — Ford Madox Ford

If you're going to have a character appear in a story long enough to sell a newspaper, he'd better be real enough that you can smell his breath. — Ford Madox Ford

If you hunch your shoulders too long against a storm your shoulders will grow bowed. ... — Ford Madox Ford

I read 'The Good Soldier' by Ford Madox Ford again every so often. — Ned Beauman

Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has the wrong thing. — Ford Madox Ford

It is a queer world and fantastic world. Why can't people have what they want? — Ford Madox Ford

Few Germans were imaginative enough to be irresponsible, but — Ford Madox Ford

Then, happy was the man who carried his liquor well. — Ford Madox Ford

Nulla dies felix - call no day fortunate till it be ended. — Ford Madox Ford

Being correspondent of a Left paper with a name like Eisenstein deprived one of one's chance of usefulness. Besides — Ford Madox Ford

Edith Ethel with the sweetest possible smile would beg the pillows off a whole hospital ward full of dying ... . She — Ford Madox Ford

It was business, and business may be presumed to cover quite a lot of bad taste. — Ford Madox Ford

[W]e are almost always in one place with our minds somewhere quite other. — Ford Madox Ford

New York is large, glamorous, easy-going, kindly and incurious, but above all it is a crucible - because it is large enough to be incurious. — Ford Madox Ford

Six months ago I had never been to England, and, certainly, I had never sounded the depths of an English heart. I had known the shallows. — Ford Madox Ford

But charity begins surely with the char! — Ford Madox Ford

For love is like a journey in mountainous country, up through the clouds, and down into the shadows to an unknown destination. — Ford Madox Ford

I thought suddenly that she wasn't real; she was just a mass of talk out of guidebooks, of drawings out of fashion-plates. — Ford Madox Ford

Sylvia knew he was only now formulating his settled opinion so as not to have his active brain to give to the discussion. — Ford Madox Ford

For Mrs. Satterthwaite interested herself - it was the only interest she had - in handsome, thin, and horribly disreputable young men. — Ford Madox Ford

It was an odd friendship, but the oddnesses of friendships are a frequent guarantee of their lasting texture. — Ford Madox Ford

If you live among dogs they'll think you've the motives of a dog. — Ford Madox Ford

My dear, it couldn't have lasted for ever ... But you're a good man. And very clever ... . You will get through ... . — Ford Madox Ford

Words passed, but words could no more prove an established innocence than words can enhance a love that exists. — Ford Madox Ford

His sister-in-law Sylvia represented for him unceasing, unsleeping activities of a fantastic kind. — Ford Madox Ford

He carried that obsession with him always. And in the end, by its very wrongness, it saved his life. — Ford Madox Ford

I couldn't regard myself as personally repulsive. No man can, or, if he ever comes to do so, that is the end of him. — Ford Madox Ford

These trenches are like Pompeii, sir. — Ford Madox Ford

Our Minister for Water-closets won't keep two and a half million men in any base in order to get the votes of their women — Ford Madox Ford

She had Authority conferred on her. Metempsychosistically. — Ford Madox Ford

This is the saddest story I have ever heard. — 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 Ford

The first thing you have to consider when writing a novel is your story, and then your story - and then your story! — Ford Madox Ford

Isn't there any heaven where old beautiful dances, old beautiful intimacies prolong themselves? — Ford Madox Ford

Otherwise the world could not continue - the children would not be healthy. And — Ford Madox Ford

Only two classes of books are of universal appeal. The very best and the very worst. — Ford Madox Ford

Ford's last Fifth Queen novel is amazing. The whole cycle is a noble conception. — Ford Madox Ford

What distinguished man from the brutes was his freedom. When, — Ford Madox Ford

Edward ought, I suppose, to have gone to the Transvaal. It would have done him a great deal of good to get killed. — Ford Madox Ford

Inspector had been in the library, and might possibly have — Ford Madox Ford

Ruggles disliked Christopher Tietjens with the inveterate dislike of the man who revels in gossip for the man who never gossips. — Ford Madox Ford

So you cannot teach me a great deal about the shady in life. I was in the family of a Middlesex County Councillor. In — Ford Madox Ford

There are times when to a poor priest the rule of the Church as regards marriage seems bitter hard — Ford Madox Ford

By Jove ... ' he said to himself: 'It's true! What a jolly little mistress she'd make! — Ford Madox Ford

And it was a most remarkable, a most moving glance, as if for a moment a lighthouse had looked at me. — Ford Madox Ford

God is probably - and very rightly - on the side of the stuffy domesticities. Otherwise — Ford Madox Ford

That in effect was love. It struck him as astonishing. The word was so little in his vocabulary ... — Ford Madox Ford

The rocks would be there a million years after the light went for the last time out. — Ford Madox Ford

The signal for the train's departure was a very bright red; that is about as passionate a statement as I can get into that scene. — Ford Madox Ford

When, then, a man was deprived of freedom he became like a brute. To — Ford Madox Ford

The world is full of places to which I want to return — Ford Madox Ford

But of course he hates you for being in the army. All the men who aren't hate all the men that are. — Ford Madox Ford

But responsibility hardens the heart. It must. — Ford Madox Ford

Was this then Lent, pressing hard on the heels of Saturnalia? Not — Ford Madox Ford

He was grotesque, really. But joy radiated from his homespuns when you walked beside him. It welled out; it enveloped you. — Ford Madox Ford

The gods to each ascribe a differing lot: Some enter at the portal. Some do not! — Ford Madox Ford

But always, at moments when his mind was like a blind octopus, squirming in an agony of knife-cuts, she would drop in that accusation. — Ford Madox Ford

But decent augurs grin behind their masks. They never preach to each other. — Ford Madox Ford

That monstrosity you honour with your name - which is also mine, thank you! — 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 Ford

And Sylvia Tietjens wavered into the room. — Ford Madox Ford

I don't know what anyone has to be proud of. — Ford Madox Ford

As Tietjens saw the world, you didn't "talk." Perhaps you didn't even think about how you felt. — Ford Madox Ford

(You cannot control your imagination's pictures. Of — Ford Madox Ford