Ford Madox Ford Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Ford Madox Ford. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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Higher than the beasts, lower than the angels, stuck in our idiot Eden.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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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.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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The world is full of places to which I want to return
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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It was an odd friendship, but the oddnesses of friendships are a frequent guarantee of their lasting texture.
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Ford Madox Ford (Some Do Not ... & No More Parades (Parade's End #1-2))
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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.
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Ford Madox Ford
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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.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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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?
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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But responsibility hardens the heart. It must.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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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.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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You seduced a young woman in order to be able to finish your talks with her. You could not do that without living with her. You could not live with her without seducing her; but that was the by-product. The point is that you can't otherwise talk. You can't finish talks at street corners; in museums; even in drawing-rooms. You mayn't be in the mood when she is in the mood โ€“ for the intimate conversation that means the final communion of your souls. You have to wait together โ€“ 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.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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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.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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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.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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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.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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[W]e are almost always in one place with our minds somewhere quite other.
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Ford Madox Ford (Critical Essays of Ford Madox Ford (Carcanet L&l))
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If you hunch your shoulders too long against a storm your shoulders will grow bowed.โ€ฆ
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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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.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Marsden Case)
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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.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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So I shall just imagine myself for a fortnight or so at one side of the fireplace of a country cottage, with a sympathetic soul opposite me. And I shall go on talking, in a low voice while the sea sounds in the distance and overhead the great black flood of wind polishes the bright stars.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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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.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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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.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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Isn't there any heaven where old beautiful dances, old beautiful intimacies prolong themselves?
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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And it was a most remarkable, a most moving glance, as if for a moment a lighthouse had looked at me.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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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.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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You see in such a world as this, an idealist -or perhaps it's only a sentimentalist-must be stoned to death. He makes the others so uncomfortable. He haunts them at their golf.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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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
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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What did you do on Armistice Night? My beloved is mine and I am his!
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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He was grotesque, really. But joy radiated from his homespuns when you walked beside him. It welled out; it enveloped you.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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This is the saddest story I have ever heard.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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It is a queer world and fantastic world. Why can't people have what they want?
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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But the real fierceness of desire, the real heat of a passion long continued and withering up the soul of a man, is the craving for identity with the woman that he loves. He desires to see with the same eyes, to touch with the same sense of touch, to hear with the same ears, to lose his identity, to be enveloped, to be supported. For, whatever may be said of the relation of the sexes, 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.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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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.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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He was a successful general because he knew men. He knew that all men will go to hell over three things: alcohol, money . . . and sex. This fellow apparently hadn't. Better for him if he had!
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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Well she was bright; and she danced...And my function in life was to keep that bright thing in existence. And it was almost as difficult as trying to catch with your hand that dancing reflection. And the task lasted for years.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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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.
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Ford Madox Ford
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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?
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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It is, in fact, asking for trouble if you are more altruist than the society that surrounds you.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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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.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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Mind, I am not preaching anything contrary to accepted morality. I am not advocating free love in this or any other case. Society must go on, I suppose, and society can only exist if the normal, if the virtuous, and the slightly deceitful flourish, and if the passionate, the headstrong, and the too-truthful are condemned to suicide and madness.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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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.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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If he had uttered the word โ€œcomeโ€ she would have followed him to the bitter ends of the earth; if he had said, โ€œThere is no hope,โ€ she would have known the finality of despair.
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Ford Madox Ford (Some Do Not...)
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With each new woman that a man is attracted to there appears to come a broadening of the outlook, or, if you like, an acquiring of new territory. A turn of the eyebrow, a tone of the voice, a queer characteristic gestureโ€”all these things, and it is these things that cause to arise the passion of love.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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That's all right! That's all right!' But for a minute or two it wasn't really. All feminine claws, he said to himself, are sheathed in velvet; but they can hurt a good deal if they touch you on the sore places of the defects of your qualities - even merely with the velvet. He added: 'Your mother works you very hard.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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She said that she did not wish for any monuments to the Hurlbird family. At the time I thought that that was because of a New England dislike for necrological ostentation.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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Edward ought, I suppose, to have gone to the Transvaal. It would have done him a great deal of good to get killed.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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For Mrs. Satterthwaite interested herself - it was the only interest she had - in handsome, thin, and horribly disreputable young men.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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As Tietjens saw the world, you didn't "talk." Perhaps you didn't even think about how you felt.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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She asked herself the eternal question โ€“ and she knew it to be the eternal question โ€“ whether no man and woman can ever leave it at the beautiful inclination.
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Ford Madox Ford (Some Do Not...)
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She was certainly now obsessing him! Beyond bearing or belief. His whole being was overwhelmed by her... by her mentality, really. For of course the physical resemblance of the lance-corporal was mere subterfuge. Lance-corporals do not resemble young ladies.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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I am not going to be so American as to say that all true love demands some sacrifice. It doesn't. But I think that love will be truer and more permanent in which self-sacrifice has been exacted.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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Men, at any rate, never fulfilled expectations. They might, upon acquaintance, turn out more entertaining than they appeared; but almost always taking up with a man was like reading a book you had read when you had forgotten that you had read it. You had not been for ten minutes in any sort of intimacy with any man before you had said: โ€œBut Iโ€™ve read all this beforeโ€ฆโ€ You knew the opening, you were already bored by the middle, and, especially, you knew the endโ€ฆ.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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Oh, child,' the Father exclaimed, 'whether it's St Martha or that Mary that made the bitter choice, not one of them ever looked more virtuous than you. Why aren't ye born to be a good man's help-meet?
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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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.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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These trenches are like Pompeii, sir.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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They were simple, earnest people, those early Victorians, and had not yet learnt the trick of avoiding disturbing thoughts and sights.
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Ford Madox Ford (Ancient Lights And Certain New Reflections Being The Memories Of A Young Man)
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This October like November, That August like a hundred thousand hours, And that September, A hundred thousand dragging sunlit days, And half October like a thousand years...
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Ford Madox Ford (Ford Madox Ford: Selected Poems (Fyfield Books))
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He carried that obsession with him always. And in the end, by its very wrongness, it saved his life.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Marsden Case)
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If you live among dogs theyโ€™ll think youโ€™ve the motives of a dog.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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He was presumably a lover. They did things like commanding battalions. And worse!
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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If you live among dogs they'll think you've the motives of a dog. What other motives can they give you ?
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Ford Madox Ford (Some Do Not...)
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His sister-in-law Sylvia represented for him unceasing, unsleeping activities of a fantastic kind.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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She had Authority conferred on her. Metempsychosistically.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End (Vintage Classics))
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Words passed, but words could no more prove an established innocence than words can enhance a love that exists.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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For love is like a journey in mountainous country, up through the clouds, and down into the shadows to an unknown destination.
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Ford Madox Ford (Romance)
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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.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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Well, then, he ought to write her a letter. He ought to say: 'This is to tell you that I propose to live with you as soon as this show is over. You will be prepared immediately on cessation of active hostilities to put yourself at my disposal; please. Signed, Xtopher Tietjens, Acting O.C. 9th Glams. A proper military communication.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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No, by God, it is false! It wasn't a minuet that we stepped; it was a prison - a prison full of screaming hysterics, tied down so that they might not outsound the rolling of our carriage wheels as we went along the shaded avenues of the Taunus Wald.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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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.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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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 work โ€œweโ€ - and perhaps without intention - he had let her know that he loved her.
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Ford Madox Ford (Some Do Not ... & No More Parades (Parade's End #1-2))
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You can't kill a minuet de la coeur. You may shut up the music book... but surely the minuet-- the minuet itself is dancing itself away into the furthest stars, even as our minuet of the Hessian bathing places must be stepping itself still.
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Ford Madox Ford
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(You cannot control your imaginationโ€™s pictures. Of
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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Ruggles disliked Christopher Tietjens with the inveterate dislike of the man who revels in gossip for the man who never gossips.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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Upon my soul!' Tietjens said to himself, 'that girl down there is the only intelligent living soul I've met for years.' A little pronounced in manner sometimes; faulty in reasoning naturally, but quite intelligent, with a touch of wrong accent now and then. But if she was wanted anywhere, there she'd be! Of good stock, of course: on both sides! But positively, she and Sylvia were the only two human beings he had met for years whom he could respect: the one for sheer efficiency in killing; the other for having the constructive desire and knowing how to set about it. Kill or cure! The two functions of man. If you wanted something killed you'd go to Sylvia Tietjens in sure faith that she would kill it: emotion, hope, ideal; kill it quick and sure. If you wanted something kept alive you'd go to Valentine: she's find something to do for it. . . . The two types of mind: remorseless enemy, sure screen, dagger ... sheath! Perhaps the future of the world then was to women? Why not? He hand't in years met a man that he hadn't to talk down to - as you talk down to a child, as he had talked down to General Campion or to Mr. Waterhouse ... as he always talked down to Macmaster. All good fellows in their way ...
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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Is the whole thing a folly and a mockery? Am I no better than a eunuch or is the proper manโ€”the man with the right to existenceโ€”a raging stallion forever neighing after his neighborโ€™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?
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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You can't kill a minuet de la coeur. You may shut up the music book... but surely the minuet-- the minuet itself is dancing itself away into the furthest stars, even as our minuet of the Hessian bathing places must be stepping itself still. Isn't there any heaven where old beautiful dances, old beautiful intimacies prolong themselves? Isn't there any Nirvana pervaded by the vain thrilling of instruments that have fallen into the dust of wormwood but that yet had frail, tremulous, and everlasting souls?
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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The handful of Germans who had reached the trench had been sacrificed for the stupid sort of fun called. Strategy, probably. Stupid! . . . It was, of course, just like German spools to go mining by candle-light. Obsoletely Nibenlungen-like. Dwarfs probably!
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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ู‡ุคู„ุงุก ู†ุณุงุก ูู„ุงู†ุฏุฑุฒ ูŠู†ุชุธุฑู† ุงู„ุถู‘ุงุฆุนูŠู†ุŒ ูŠู†ุชุธุฑู†ูŽ ุงู„ุถู‘ุงุฆุนูŠู† ุงู„ุฐูŠู† ุฃุจุฏุงู‹ ู„ู†ู’ ูŠูุบุงุฏุฑูˆุง ุงู„ู…ูŠู†ุงุกุŒ ูŠู†ุชุธุฑู† ุงู„ุถู‘ุงุฆุนูŠู† ุงู„ู‘ุฐูŠู† ุฃุจุฏุงู‹ ู„ู† ูŠุฌูŠุก ุจู‡ู… ุงู„ู‚ุทุงุฑ ุฅู„ู‰ ุฃุญุถุงู† ู‡ุคู„ุงุก ุงู„ู†ู‘ุณูˆุฉุŒ ุฐูˆุงุช ุงู„ูˆุฌูˆู‡ ุงู„ู…ูŠุชุฉุŒ ูŠู†ุชุธุฑู† ุงู„ุถู‘ุงุฆุนูŠู† ุงู„ู‘ุฐูŠู† ูŠุฑู‚ุฏูˆู† ู…ูˆุชู‰ ููŠ ุงู„ุฎู†ุฏู‚ ูˆุงู„ุญุงุฌุฒ ูˆุงู„ุทู‘ูŠู† ููŠ ุธู„ุงู… ุงู„ู„ูŠู„. ู‡ุฐู‡ ู…ุญุทู‘ุฉ ุชุดุงุฑู†ุบ ูƒุฑูˆุณ. ุงู„ุณู‘ุงุนุฉ ุฌุงูˆุฒุช ุงู„ูˆุงุญุฏุฉ. ุซู…ู‘ุฉ ุถูˆุก ุถุฆูŠู„ ุซู…ู‘ุฉ ุฃู„ู… ุนุธูŠู…".
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Ford Madox Ford (Antwerp)
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This, Tietjens thought, is England! A man and a maid walk through Kentish grass fields: the grass ripe for the scythe. The man honourable, clean, upright; the maid virtuous, clean, vigorous; he of good birth; she of birth quite as good; each filled with a too good breakfast that each could yet capably digest. Each come just from an admirably appointed establishment: a table surrounded by the best people, their promenade sanctioned, as it were, by Church - two clergy - the State, two Government officials; by mothers, friends, old maids.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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He thought about her deliberately. Hard. Nothing happened. He thought of her fair, undistinguished, fresh face that made your heart miss a beat when you thought about it. His heart missed a beat. Obedient heart! Like the first primrose. Not any primrose. The first primrose.
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Ford Madox Ford
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We talked of it, of course, but I guess Florence got all she wanted out of one look at a place. She had the seeing eye. I haven't, unfortunately, so that the world is full of places to which I want to return.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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I suppose that my inner soul - my dual personality - had realized long before that Florence was a personality of paper - that she represented a real human being with a heart, with feelings, with sympathies and with emotions only as a bank-note represents a certain quantity of gold.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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In all matrimonial associations there is, I believe, one constant factor - a desire to deceive the person with whom one lives as to some weak spot in one's character or in one's career. For it is intolerable to live constantly with one human being who perceives one's small meannesses. It is really death to do so - that is why so many marriages turn out unhappily.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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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?
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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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.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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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. Yet first impressions have always a bias in their favour, and even quiet reflection has often a job to efface them.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End (Vintage Classics))
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By God!โ€™ Christopher exclaimed. โ€˜I loathe your whole beastly buttered-toast, mutton-chopped, carpet-slippered, rum-negused comfort as much as I loathe your beastly Riviera-palaced, chauffeured, hydraulic-lifted, hot-house aired beastliness of fornication.โ€ฆ
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End (Vintage Classics))
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You may ask why I write. And yet my reasons are quite many. For it is not unusual in human beings who have witnessed the sack of a city or the falling to pieces of a people to desire to set down what they have witnesses for the benefit of unknown heirs or of generations infinitely remote; or, if you please, just to get the sight out of their heads.
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Ford Madox Ford
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But, in these later days, much greater convulsions had overwhelmed her. It sufficed for Tietjens to approach her to make her feel as if her whole body was drawn towards him as, being near a terrible height, you are drawn towards it. Great waves of blood rushed across her being as if physical forces as yet undiscovered or invented attracted the very fluid itself. The moon so draws the tides.
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Ford Madox Ford (Some Do Not...)
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Now a man listening to gossip about another man whom he knows very well will go pretty far in the way of believing what a beautiful woman will tell him about that other man. Beauty and truth have a way of appearing to be akin; and it is true that no man knows what another man is doing when he is out of sight.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End (Vintage Classics))
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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...
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Ford Madox Ford
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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...
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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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.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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You have no idea how engrossing such a profession may become. Just as the blacksmith says: 'By hammer and hand all Art doth stand,' just as the baker thinks that all the solar system revolves around his morning delivery of rolls, as the postmaster-general believes that he alone is the preserver of society - and surely, surely, these delusions are necessary to keep us going.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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Is the whole thing a folly and a mockery? Am I no better than a eunuch or is the proper manโ€”the man with the right to existenceโ€”a raging stallion forever neighing after his neighborโ€™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? Or all we meant to act on impulse alone? It is all a darkness.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)
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The beastly Huns! They stood between him and Valentine Wannop. If they would go home he could be sitting talking to her for whole afternoons. That was what a young woman was for. You seduced a young woman in order to be able to finish your talks with her. You could not do that without living with her. You could not live with her without seducing her; but that was the by-product. The point is that you canโ€™t otherwise talk.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End (Vintage Classics))
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The room where they were dancing was very dark.... It was queer to be in his arms.... She had known better dancers.... He had looked ill.... Perhaps he was.... Oh, poor Valentine-Elisabeth.... What a funny position!.... The good gramophone played.... Destiny!.... You see, father! ... In his arms! Of course, dancing is not really.... But so near the real thing! So near!... 'Good luck to the special intention!...' She had almost kissed him on the lips ... All but!... Effleurer, the French call it.... But she was not as humble.... He had pressed her tighter.... All these months without.... My lord did me honour.... Good for Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre.... He knew she had almost kissed him on the lips.... And that his lips had almost responded.... The civilian, the novelist, had turned out the last light.... Tietjens said, 'Hadn't we better talk?...' She said: 'In my room, then! I'm dog-tired.... I haven't slept for six nights.... In spite of drugs...' He said: 'Yes. Of course! Where else?....
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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The day of her long interview with Tietjens, amongst the amassed beauties of Macmaster furnishings, she marked in the calendar of her mind as her great love scene. That had been two years ago; he had been going into the army. Now he was going out again. From that she knew what a love scene was. It passed without mention of the word 'love'; it passed in impulses; warmths; rigors of the skin. Yet with every word they had said to each other they had confessed their love; in that way, when you listen to the nightingale you hear the expressed craving of your lover beating upon your heart.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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Old Campion had once said he believed - he positively believed, with shudders - that Christopher desired to live in the spirit of Christ. That had seemed horrible to the general, but Mark did not see that it was horrible, per se... He doubted, however, whether Christ would have refused to manage Groby had it been his job. Christ was sort of an Englishman and Englishmen did not as rule refuse their jobs... They had not used to; now no doubt they did.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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Every word that he had spoken amongst the amassed beauties of Macmaster furnishings had been a link in a love-speech. It was not merely that he had confessed to her as he would have to no other soul in the world - 'To no other soul in the world,' he had said! - his doubts, his misgivings, and his fears; it was that every word he uttered and that came to her, during the lasting of that magic, had sung of passion. 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. Having said neither, she knew: 'This is our condition; so we must continue!' And she knew, too, that he was telling her that he, like her, wasโ€ฆ oh, say, on the side of the angels.
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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At the beginning of the warโ€ฆI had to look in on the War Office, and in a room I found a fellowโ€ฆWhat do you think he was doingโ€ฆwhat the hell do you think he was doing? He was devising the ceremonial for the disbanding of a Kitchener battalion. You canโ€™t say we were not prepared in one matter at leastโ€ฆ. Well, the end of the show was to be: the adjutant would stand the battalion at ease; the band would play Land of Hope and Glory, and then the adjutant would say: There will be no more paradesโ€ฆ. Donโ€™t you see how symbolical it wasโ€”the band playing Land of Hope and Glory, and then the adjutant saying: There will be no more parades?โ€ฆFor there wonโ€™t. There wonโ€™t, there damn well wonโ€™t. No more Hope, no more Glory, no more parades for you and me any more. Nor for the countryโ€ฆnor for the world, I dare sayโ€ฆ Noneโ€ฆ Goneโ€ฆ Napoo finny! Noโ€ฆmoreโ€ฆparades!
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Ford Madox Ford (Parade's End)
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I have, I am aware, told this story in a very rambling way so that it may be difficult for anyone to find his path through what may be a sort of maze. I cannot help it. I have stuck to my idea of being in a country cottage with a silent listener, hearing between the gusts of the wind and amidst the noises of the distant sea the story as it comes. And, when one discusses an affair - a long, sad affair - one goes back, one goes forward. One remembers points that one has forgotten and one explains them all the more minutely since one recognizes that one has forgotten to mention them in their proper places and that one may have given, by omitting them, a false impression. I console myself with thinking that this is a real story and that, after all, real stories are probably told best in the way a person telling a story would tell them. They will then seem most real.
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Ford Madox Ford (The Good Soldier)