Ford Madox Ford Quotes

35 Sourced Quotes

Our intimacy was like a minuet, simply because on every possible occasion and in every possible circumstance we knew where to go, where to sit, which table we unanimously should choose; and we could rise and go, all four together, without a signal from any one of us, always to the music of the Kur orchestra, always in the temperate sunshine, or, if it rained, in discreet shelters.

Ford Madox Ford
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.

Ford Madox Ford
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.

Ford Madox Ford
Pride and reserve are not the only things in life; perhaps they are not even the best things. But if they happen to be your particular virtues you will go all to pieces if you let them go.

Ford Madox Ford
He added that a Frenchman in the train had given him a great sandwich that so stank of garlic that he had been inclined to throw it at the fellow's head.

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
Only two classes of books are of universal appeal: the very best and the very worst.

Ford Madox Ford
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.

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

Ford Madox Ford
No author, I think, is deserving of much censure for vanity if, taking down one of his ten-year-old books, he exclaims: "Great heavens, did I write as well as that then?" for the implication always is that one does not write any longer so well and few are so envious as to censure the complacencies of an extinct volcano.

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
A fervent young admirer exclaimed: "By Jove, the Good Soldier is the finest novel in the English language!" whereupon my friend John Rodker, who has always had a properly tempered admiration for my work, remarked in his clear, slow drawl: "Ah, yes. It is, but you have left out a word. It is the finest French novel in the English language!"

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
This is the saddest story I have ever heard.

Ford Madox Ford
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.

Ford Madox Ford
If you only would!" He added rather diffidently: "If you would not mind remembering that I am a military court of inquiry. It makes it easier for me to report to the general if you say things dully and in the order that they happened.

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

Ford Madox Ford
What the artist wishes to do — as far as you are concerned — is to take you out of yourself. As far as he is concerned, he wishes to express himself.

Ford Madox Ford
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.

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

Ford Madox Ford
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.

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
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.

Ford Madox Ford
It is a queer and fantastic world. Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has got the wrong thing. Perhaps you can make head or tail of it; it is beyond me.
Is there 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 are 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?

Ford Madox Ford
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?

Ford Madox Ford
You may well 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 set down what they have witnessed for the benefit of unknown heirs or of generations infinitely remote; or, if you please, just to get the sight out of their heads.

Ford Madox Ford
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.

Ford Madox Ford
For the judging of contemporary literature the only test is one's personal taste. If you much like a new book, you must call it literature even though you find no other soul to agree with you, and if you dislike a book you must declare that it is not literature though a million voices should shout you that you are wrong. The ultimate decision will be made by Time.

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