John Ford Quotes

Ford was of the first order of poets. He sought for sublimity, not by parcels in metaphors or visible images, but directly where she has her full residence in the heart of man; in the actions and sufferings of the greatest minds.

I have spent
Many a silent night in sighs and groans,
Ran over all my thoughts, despised my fate,
Reasoned against the reasons of my love,
Done all that smoothed-cheek Virtue could advise,
But found all bootless: 'tis my destiny
That you must either love, or I must die.

Philosophers dwell in the moon.

Let them fear bondage who are slaves to fear;
The sweetest freedom is an honest heart.

Melancholy
Is not, as you conceive, indisposition
Of body, but the mind's disease.

Flattery
Is monstrous in a true friend.

Physicians are the cobblers, rather the botchers, of men's bodies; as the one patches our tattered clothes, so the other solders our diseased flesh.

The joys of marriage are the heaven on earth,
Life's paradise, great princess, the soul's quiet,
Sinews of concord, earthly immortality,
Eternity of pleasures; no restoratives
Like to a constant woman!

Revenge proves its own executioner.

What? [...] I understood the question but what does it mean? [...] I don't have a method. I tell them what to do. They do it. If I'm not satisfied, I correct their errors, I tell them to raise their voice, or to emphasize such-and-such sentence, and they do it again; that's all. Anyway, most of the time the actors are very good friends of mine and I know their personality and their range. There's no method involved there."

Tempt not the stars, young man, thou canst not play
With the severity of fate.

Why, I hold fate
Clasped in my fist, and could command the course
Of time's eternal motion, hadst thou been
One thought more steady than an ebbing sea.

Truth is child of time.

I am, gay creature,
With pardon of your deities, a mushroom
On whom the dew of heaven drops now and then.

Green indiscretion, flattery of greatness,
Rawness of judgement, wilfulness in folly,
Thoughts vagrant as the wind, and as uncertain.