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The Good Soldier QUOTES

The Good Soldier QUOTES

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

― Ford Madox Ford , The Good Soldier

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

― Ford Madox Ford , The Good Soldier

3 " The conclusion of Dowell's narrative offers not a resolution, so much as a plangent confirmation of complexities. While Ford would certainly have agreed with Dowell that it is a novelist's business to make a reader 'see things clearly', his interest in clarity had little to do with simplicity. There is no 'getting to the bottom of things', no triumphant answers to the epistemological muddle offered in this beautiful, bleak story - only a finer appreciation of that confusion. We may remove the scales from our eyes, Ford suggests, but only the better to appreciate the glass through which we see darkly. "

― Zoë Heller , The Good Soldier

4 " The world is full of places to which I want to return "

― Ford Madox Ford , The Good Soldier

5 " 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 , The Good Soldier

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

― Ford Madox Ford , The Good Soldier

7 " 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 , The Good Soldier

8 " But the real fierceness of desire, the real heat of a passion long continued and withering up the soul of a man, is the craving for identity with the woman that he loves. He desires to see with the same eyes, to touch with the same sense of touch, to hear with the same ears, to lose his identity, to be enveloped, to be supported. For, whatever may be said of the relation of the sexes, 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 , The Good Soldier

9 " 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 , The Good Soldier

10 " So I shall just imagine myself for a fortnight or so at one side of the fireplace of a country cottage, with a sympathetic soul opposite me. And I shall go on talking, in a low voice while the sea sounds in the distance and overhead the great black flood of wind polishes the bright stars. "

― Ford Madox Ford , The Good Soldier

11 " The instances of honesty that one comes across in this world are just as amazing as the instances of dishonesty. After forty-five years of mixing with one's kind, one ought to have acquired the habit of being able to know something about one's fellow beings. But one doesn't "

― Ford Madox Ford , The Good Soldier

12 " Mind, I am not preaching anything contrary to accepted morality. I am not advocating free love in this or any other case. Society must go on, I suppose, and society can only exist if the normal, if the virtuous, and the slightly deceitful flourish, and if the passionate, the headstrong, and the too-truthful are condemned to suicide and madness. "

― Ford Madox Ford , The Good Soldier

13 " With each new woman that a man is attracted to there appears to come a broadening of the outlook, or, if you like, an acquiring of new territory. A turn of the eyebrow, a tone of the voice, a queer characteristic gesture—all these things, and it is these things that cause to arise the passion of love. "

― Ford Madox Ford , The Good Soldier

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

― Ford Madox Ford , The Good Soldier

15 " Well she was bright; and she danced...And my function in life was to keep that bright thing in existence. And it was almost as difficult as trying to catch with your hand that dancing reflection. And the task lasted for years. "

― Ford Madox Ford , The Good Soldier

16 " This is the saddest story I have ever heard. "

― Ford Madox Ford , The Good Soldier

17 " You can't kill a minuet de la coeur. You may shut up the music book... but surely the minuet-- the minuet itself is dancing itself away into the furthest stars, even as our minuet of the Hessian bathing places must be stepping itself still. Isn't there any heaven where old beautiful dances, old beautiful intimacies prolong themselves? Isn't there any Nirvana pervaded by the vain thrilling of instruments that have fallen into the dust of wormwood but that yet had frail, tremulous, and everlasting souls? "

― Ford Madox Ford , The Good Soldier

18 " She said that she did not wish for any monuments to the Hurlbird family. At the time I thought that that was because of a New England dislike for necrological ostentation. "

― Ford Madox Ford , The Good Soldier

19 " Is the whole thing a folly and a mockery? Am I no better than a eunuch or is the proper man—the man with the right to existence—a raging stallion forever neighing after his neighbor’s womankind? I don't know. And there is nothing to guide us. And if everything is so nebulous about a matter so elementary as the morals of sex, what is there to guide us in the more subtle morality of all other personal contacts, associations, and activities? "

― Ford Madox Ford , The Good Soldier

20 " But upon my word, I don't know how we put in our time. How does one put in one's time? How is it possible to have achieved nine years and to have nothing whatever to show for it? "

― Ford Madox Ford , The Good Soldier