"هؤلاء نساء فلاندرز ينتظرن الضّائعين، ينتظرنَ الضّائعين الذين أبداً لنْ يُغادروا الميناء، ينتظرن الضّائعين الّذين أبداً لن يجيء بهم القطار إلى أحضان هؤلاء النّ… - Ford Madox Ford

Fellows come in and tell the most extraordinarily gross stories — so gross that they will positively give you a pain. And yet they’d be offended if you suggested that they weren’t the sort of person you could trust your wife alone with.

There, there, my dear boy,’ he said, ‘come and have a sloe gin. That’s the real answer to all beastly problems.

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?