129 Quotes by Ford Madox Ford

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.

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 can’t otherwise talk.

Words passed, but words could no more prove an established innocence than words can enhance a love that exists.

Our Minister for Water-closets won’t keep two and a half million men in any base in order to get the votes of their women.

Why can’t people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has the wrong thing.

He had the very greatest admiration. He admire her for her truthfulness, for her cleanness of mind, and the clean-run-ness of her limbs, for her efficiency, for the fairness of her skin, for the gold of her hair, for her religion, for her sense of duty. It was a satisfaction to take her about with him.

Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.

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

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.