Quotes from Ford Madox Ford

I don't know. I know nothing. I am very tired.

But why was he born to be a sort of lonely buffalo: outside the herd? Not artist: not soldier: not bureaucrat: not certainly indispensable anywhere: apparently not even sound in the eyes of these dim-minded specialists… An exact observer…

You know the man on the stage who throws up sixteen balls at once and they all drop into pockets all over his person, on his shoulders, on his heels, on the inner side of his sleeves; and he stands perfectly still and does nothing. Well, it was like that.

the voice of M. Schontz would go on and on under its breath like that of an unclean priest reciting from his breviary in the corner of a railway-carriage.

It would be restful to serve, if only as a slave, people who saw clearly, coldly, straight, not obliquely and with hypocrisy only, such things as should deviously conduce to the standard of comfort of hogs and to lecheries winked at...He

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 the wrong thing.

No, the essence of prayer is volition, so the essence of blasphemy is volition. She

pour le bon motif!

He knew that it is as difficult for a rich man to go to heaven as it is for a camel to go through the gate in Jerusalem called the Needle's.

Although Tietjens hated golf as he hated any occupation that was of a competitive nature, he could engross himself in the mathematics of trajectories when

Christ was a sort of an Englishman, and Englishmen did not, as a rule, refuse to do their jobs .

We were fitted neither for defeat nor for victory: we could be true to neither friend nor foe. Not even to ourselves!

She had suddenly a clear view of him as a man extraordinarily clear-sighted in the affairs of others, in great affairs, but in his own so simple as to be almost a baby. And gentle! And extraordinarily unselfish. He didn't betray one thought of self-interest… not one.

But charity begins surely with the char!

Un estilo interesante consiste en una sucesión constante de diminutas, casi indetectables, sorpresas en el texto

She at least was broad-minded, and moreover she understood the workings of the human heart. It was creditable for a man to ruin himself for the object of his affections. But this at least she found exaggerated.

You and I are like two people . . . He paused and began again more quickly: Do you know these soap advertisement signs that read differently from several angles? As you come up to them you read 'Monkey's Soap'; if you look back when you've passed it's 'Needs no Rinsing.' . . . You and I are standing at different angles and though we both look at the same thing we read different messages. Perhaps if we stood side by side we should see yet third. . . . But I hope we respect each other.

At the same time, Mrs de Bray Pape was saying things to the discredit of Marie Antoinette, whom apparently she disliked. He could not imagine why anyone should dislike Marie Antoinette. Yet very likely she was dislikeable. The French, who were sensible people, had cut her head off, so they presumably disliked her . .

Of course Christopher would cultivate an English accent: to show that he was an English country gentleman. And he would speak correctly – to show that an English Tory can do anything in the world if he wants to . . .

we saw that Life did not narrate but made impressions on our brains. We in turn, if we wished to produce on you an effect of life, must not narrate but render... impressions.

She buckled about her her armour of charm

And it occurs to me that some way back I began a sentence that I never finished...

For all good soldiers are sentimentalists - all good soldiers of that type. Their profession, for one thing, is full of big words, courage, loyalty, honour, constancy.

My wife and I knew Captain and Mrs Ashburnham as well as it was possible to know anybody, and yet, in another sense, we knew nothing at all about them. This is, I believe, a state of things only possible with English people of whom, till today, when I sit down to puzzle out what I know of this sad affair, I knew nothing whatever.