Ford Madox Ford

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.

But always, at moments when his mind was like a blind octopus, squirming in an agony of knife-cuts, she would drop in that accusation.

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 ...

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.

I know nothing - nothing in the world - of the hearts of men. I only know that I am alone - horribly alone.

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.

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.

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.

He was presumably a lover. They did things like commanding battalions. And worse!

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.

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.

Isn't there any heaven where old beautiful dances, old beautiful intimacies prolong themselves?

At the beginning of the war_I had to look in on the War Office, and in a room I found a fellow_What do you think he was doing_what the hell do you think he was doing? He was devising the ceremonial for the disbanding of a Kitchener battalion. You can__ say we were not prepared in one matter at least_. 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 parades_. Don__ you see how symbolical it was__he band playing Land of Hope and Glory, and then the adjutant saying: There will be no more parades?_For there won__. There won__, there damn well won__. No more Hope, no more Glory, no more parades for you and me any more. Nor for the country_nor for the world, I dare say_ None_ Gone_ Napoo finny! No_more_parades!

But to betray her with battalion... That is against decency, against Nature...And for him, Christopher tietjens, to come down to the level of the men you met here!

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.

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, was_ oh, say, on the side of the angels.

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.

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.