Ford Madox Ford Quotes

But upon my word, I don't know how we put in our time. How does one put in one's time? How is it possible to have achieved nine years and to have nothing whatever to show for it?

Is the whole thing a folly and a mockery? Am I no better than a eunuch or is the proper man — the man with the right to existence — a raging stallion forever neighing after his neighbor’s womankind? I don't know. And there is nothing to guide us. And if everything is so nebulous about a matter so elementary as the morals of sex, what is there to guide us in the more subtle morality of all other personal contacts, associations, and activities?

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

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.

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

You will then. Listen here...I've always got this to look forward to: I'll settle down by that man's side. I'll be as virtuous as any woman. I've made up my mind to it and I'll be it. And I'll be bored stiff for the rest of my life. Except for one thing. I can torment that man. And I'll do it. Do you understand how I'll do it? There are many ways. But if the worst comes to the worst I can always drive him silly...by corrupting the child!' She was panting a little, and round her brown eyes the whites showed. 'I'll get even with him. I can. I know how, you see. And with you, through him, for tormenting me. I've come all the way from Brittany without stopping. I haven't slept...But I can...

Father Consett sighed.

'I told you this was an evil place,' he said. 'In the deep forests. She'd not have such evil thoughts in another place.' Mrs Satterthwaite said:

'I'd rather you didn't say that, Father. Sylvia would have evil thoughts in any place.'

'Sometimes,' the priest said, 'at night I think I hear the claws of evil things scratching on the shutters. This was the last place in Europe to be Christianised. Perhaps it wasn't ever even Christianised and they're here yet.'

Mrs Satterthwaite said:

'It's all very well to talk like that in the day-time. It makes the place seem romantic. But it must be near one at night. And things are bad enough as it is.'

'They are,' Father Consett said. 'The devil's at work.

But we who remain shall grow old
We shall know the cold
Of cheerless
Winter and the rain of Autumn and the sting
Of poverty, of love despised and of disgraces,
And mirrors showing stained and aging faces,
And the long ranges of comfortless years
And the long gamut of human fears...
But, for you, it shall forever be spring,
And only you shall be forever fearless,
And only you have white, straight, tireless limbs,
And only you, where the water-lily swims
Shall walk along the pathways thro' the willows
Of your west.
You who went West,
and only you on silvery twilight pillows
Shall take your rest
In the soft sweet glooms
Of twilight rooms...

If he had uttered the word “come” she would have followed him to the bitter ends of the earth; if he had said, “There is no hope,” she would have known the finality of despair.

It's the quality of harmony, sir. The quality of being in harmony with you own soul. God having given you your own soul you are then in harmony with Heaven.

Is there then any terrestrial paradise where, amidst the whispering of the olive-leaves, people can be with whom they like and have what they like and take their ease in shadows and in coolness? Or all men's lives like the lives of us good people - like the lives of the Ashburnhams, of the Dowells, of the Ruffords - broken, tumultuous, agonized, and unromantic lives, periods punctuated by screams, by imbecilities, by deaths, by agonies? Who the devil knows?

"هؤلاء نساء فلاندرز
ينتظرن الضّائعين،
ينتظرنَ الضّائعين الذين أبداً لنْ يُغادروا الميناء،
ينتظرن الضّائعين الّذين أبداً لن يجيء بهم القطار
إلى أحضان هؤلاء النّسوة، ذوات الوجوه الميتة،
ينتظرن الضّائعين الّذين يرقدون موتى في الخندق والحاجز والطّين في ظلام الليل.
هذه محطّة تشارنغ كروس. السّاعة جاوزت الواحدة.
ثمّة ضوء ضئيل
ثمّة ألم عظيم".

He was in a beastly hole. But decency demanded that he shouldn't act in panic. He had a mechanical, normal panic that made him divest himself of money. Gentlemen don't earn money. Gentlemen, as a matter of fact, don't do anything. They exist. Perfuming the air like Madonna lilies. Money comes into them as air through petals and foliage. Thus the world is made better and brighter. And, of course, thus political life can be kept clean!... So you can't make money.

In one's own home it is as if little, innate sympathies draw one to particular chairs that seem to enfold one in an embrace, or take one along particular streets that seem friendly when others may be hostile. And, believe me, that feeling is a very important part of life.

You are to understand that Lenora loved Edward with a passion that was yet like an agony of hatred. And she had lived with him for years and years without addressing to him one word of tenderness. I don't know how she could do it.