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Six months ago I had never been to England, and, certainly, I had never sounded the depths of an English heart. I had known the shallows.

Ford Madox Ford

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Ford Madox Ford
Age: 65 †
Born: 1873
Born: December 17
Died: 1939
Died: June 26
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Prosaist
Publisher
Writer
Merton
Ford Hermann Hueffer
Ford Madox Hueffer
Joseph Leopold Ford Hermann Madox Hueffer
Known
Depths
Heart
Six
Never
Depth
English
England
Certainly
Months
Shallows
Literature
Sounded

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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
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No author, I think, is deserving of much censure for vanity if, taking down one of his ten-year-old books, he exclaims: Great heavens, did I write as well as that then? for the implication always is that one does not write any longer so well and few are so envious as to censure the complacencies of an extinct volcano.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Only two classes of books are of universal appeal. The very best and the very worst.
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But responsibility hardens the heart. It must.
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I couldn't regard myself as personally repulsive. No man can, or, if he ever comes to do so, that is the end of him.
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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.
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The object of the novelist is to keep the reader entirely oblivious of the fact that the author exists - even of the fact he is reading a book.
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If you're going to have a character appear in a story long enough to sell a newspaper, he'd better be real enough that you can smell his breath.
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The world is full of places to which I want to return
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Damn it all, it's the first duty of a soldier - it's the first duty of all Englishmen - to be able to tell a good lie in answer to a charge.
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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.
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The first thing you have to consider when writing a novel is your story, and then your story - and then your story!
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[W]e are almost always in one place with our minds somewhere quite other.
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It was an odd friendship, but the oddnesses of friendships are a frequent guarantee of their lasting texture.
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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.
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They were simple, earnest people, those early Victorians, and had not yet learnt the trick of avoiding disturbing thoughts and sights.
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If you hunch your shoulders too long against a storm your shoulders will grow bowed.
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