129 Quotes by Ford Madox Ford

Mrs. Vanderdecken,’ Sylvia went on, ’says all men are repulsive and it’s woman’s disgusting task to live beside them.

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.

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.

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.

She had Authority conferred on her. Metempsychosistically.

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

But, even with all her differences, Mrs. Basil did not appear to Lenora to differ so very much from herself. She was truthful, honest and, for the rest, just a woman. And Lenora had a vague sort of idea that, to a man, all women are the same after three weeks of close intercourse.

From time to time we shall get up and go to the door and look out at the great moon and say: ‘Why, it is nearly as bright as in Provence!’ And then we shall come back to the fireside, with just the touch of a sigh because we are not in that Provence where even the saddest stories are gay.

It was business, and business may be presumed to cover quite a lot of bad taste.