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d22ae29
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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 wor..
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Ford Madox Ford |
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ec2526e
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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.
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quality-of-a-saint
tietjens
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Ford Madox Ford |
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c5b936f
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As Tietjens saw the world, you didn't "talk." Perhaps you didn't even think about how you felt."
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Ford Madox Ford |
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8df8f6b
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For Mrs. Satterthwaite interested herself - it was the only interest she had - in handsome, thin, and horribly disreputable young men.
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Ford Madox Ford |
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6ced681
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Oh, child,' the Father exclaimed, 'whether it's St Martha or that Mary that made the bitter choice, not one of them ever looked more virtuous than you. Why aren't ye born to be a good man's help-meet?
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Ford Madox Ford |
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fc40359
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She had always known under her mind and now she confessed it: her agony had been, half of it, because one day he would say farewell to her, like that, with the inflexion of a verb. As, just occasionally, using the work "we" - and perhaps without intention - he had let her know that he loved her."
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Ford Madox Ford |
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4b50369
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You will then. Listen here...I've always got this to look forward to: I'll settle down by that man's side. I'll be as virtuous as any woman. I've made up my mind to it and I'll be it. And I'll be bored stiff for the rest of my life. Except for one thing. I can torment that man. And I'll do it. Do you understand how I'll do it? There are many ways. But if the worst comes to the worst I can always drive him silly...by corrupting the child!' S..
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Ford Madox Ford |
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0ea82db
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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.
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Ford Madox Ford |
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7726b66
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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?
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Ford Madox Ford |
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3946990
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It is, in fact, asking for trouble if you are more altruist than the society that surrounds you.
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Ford Madox Ford |
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63ba007
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But we who remain shall grow old We shall know the cold Of cheerless Winter and the rain of Autumn and the sting Of poverty, of love despised and of disgraces, And mirrors showing stained and aging faces, And the long ranges of comfortless years And the long gamut of human fears... But, for you, it shall forever be spring, And only you shall be forever fearless, And only you have white, straight, tireless limbs, And only you, where the wa..
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death
dying
forever
life
sad
war
youth
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Ford Madox Ford (Ford Madox Hueffer ) |
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de4bb82
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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?
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Ford Madox Ford |
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16617cc
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This October like November, That August like a hundred thousand hours, And that September, A hundred thousand dragging sunlit days, And half October like a thousand years...
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Ford Madox Ford |
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57afa37
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He carried that obsession with him always. And in the end, by its very wrongness, it saved his life.
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Ford Madox Ford |
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b5c2361
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Is there then any terrestrial paradise where, amidst the whispering of the olive-leaves, people can be with whom they like and have what they like and take their ease in shadows and in coolness? Or all men's lives like the lives of us good people - like the lives of the Ashburnhams, of the Dowells, of the Ruffords - broken, tumultuous, agonized, and unromantic lives, periods punctuated by screams, by imbecilities, by deaths, by agonies? Who..
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Ford Madox Ford |
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1c2ab77
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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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Ford Madox Ford |
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eae55d3
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She asked herself the eternal question - and she knew it to be the eternal question - whether no man and woman can ever leave it at the beautiful inclination.
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Ford Madox Ford |
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a57ef5b
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It is a queer world and fantastic world. Why can't people have what they want?
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Ford Madox Ford |
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1096abe
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You are to understand that Lenora loved Edward with a passion that was yet like an agony of hatred. And she had lived with him for years and years without addressing to him one word of tenderness. I don't know how she could do it.
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Ford Madox Ford |
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e788a3a
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His sister-in-law Sylvia represented for him unceasing, unsleeping activities of a fantastic kind.
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Ford Madox Ford |
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e66ec11
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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.
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cruelty
power
women
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Ford Madox Ford |
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f04be67
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The handful of Germans who had reached the trench had been sacrificed for the stupid sort of fun called. Strategy, probably. Stupid! . . . It was, of course, just like German spools to go mining by candle-light. Obsoletely Nibenlungen-like. Dwarfs probably!
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tietjens
war
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Ford Madox Ford |
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16c1b12
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He was presumably a lover. They did things like commanding battalions. And worse!
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tietjens
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Ford Madox Ford |
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048a8ab
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If you live among dogs they'll think you've the motives of a dog.
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Ford Madox Ford |
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1a32120
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The day of her long interview with Tietjens, amongst the amassed beauties of Macmaster furnishings, she marked in the calendar of her mind as her great love scene. That had been two years ago; he had been going into the army. Now he was going out again. From that she knew what a love scene was. It passed without mention of the word 'love'; it passed in impulses; warmths; rigors of the skin. Yet with every word they had said to each other th..
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love-scene
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Ford Madox Ford |
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94f0a50
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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 '..
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love
lovers
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Ford Madox Ford |
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6a8a90f
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No, by God, it is false! It wasn't a minuet that we stepped; it was a prison - a prison full of screaming hysterics, tied down so that they might not outsound the rolling of our carriage wheels as we went along the shaded avenues of the Taunus Wald.
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Ford Madox Ford |
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f624813
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In one's own home it is as if little, innate sympathies draw one to particular chairs that seem to enfold one in an embrace, or take one along particular streets that seem friendly when others may be hostile. And, believe me, that feeling is a very important part of life.
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Ford Madox Ford |
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7149ef0
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In all matrimonial associations there is, I believe, one constant factor - a desire to deceive the person with whom one lives as to some weak spot in one's character or in one's career. For it is intolerable to live constantly with one human being who perceives one's small meannesses. It is really death to do so - that is why so many marriages turn out unhappily.
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Ford Madox Ford |
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fbecc0c
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Edward ought, I suppose, to have gone to the Transvaal. It would have done him a great deal of good to get killed.
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Ford Madox Ford |
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a99b3af
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The man looked down at his feet. Tietjens said to himself that it was Valentine Wannop doing this to him. He ought to turn the man down at once. He was pervaded by a sense of her being. It was imbecile. Yet it was so.
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Ford Madox Ford |
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365ec3f
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If you live among dogs they'll think you've the motives of a dog. What other motives can they give you ?
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Ford Madox Ford |
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2a38be8
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You cannot control your imagination's pictures. Of
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Ford Madox Ford |
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8a5c9b0
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These trenches are like Pompeii, sir.
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Ford Madox Ford |
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889bfc0
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He had a great deal to think of if he was to get the hang of - he was certainly not going to interfere with - the world and having to listen to conversations that were mostly moral apophthegms had tired him. He got too many at too short intervals.
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Ford Madox Ford |
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95d2de0
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Old Campion had once said that he believed - he positively believed, with shudders - that Christopher desired to live in the spirit of Christ. That had seemed horrible to the general, but Mark did not see that it was horrible, per se.... He doubted, however, whether Christ would have refused to manage Groby had it been his job. Christ was a sort of an Englishman and Englishmen did not as a rule refuse to do their jobs.... They had not used ..
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Ford Madox Ford |
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593a9ce
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You'll come with me, my little man,' Sylvia said, 'if you ever want to bask in my smile again....
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Ford Madox Ford |
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355d359
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But, in these later days, much greater convulsions had overwhelmed her. It sufficed for Tietjens to approach her to make her feel as if her whole body was drawn towards him as, being near a terrible height, you are drawn towards it. Great waves of blood rushed across her being as if physical forces as yet undiscovered or invented attracted the very fluid itself. The moon so draws the tides.
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Ford Madox Ford |
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813cdc0
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I am not going to be so American as to say that all true love demands some sacrifice. It doesn't. But I think that love will be truer and more permanent in which self-sacrifice has been exacted.
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Ford Madox Ford |
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151ed63
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I suppose that my inner soul - my dual personality - had realized long before that Florence was a personality of paper - that she represented a real human being with a heart, with feelings, with sympathies and with emotions only as a bank-note represents a certain quantity of gold.
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Ford Madox Ford |
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c942a33
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She had Authority conferred on her. Metempsychosistically.
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Ford Madox Ford |
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1c919f0
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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. Yet first impressions have always a bias in their favour, and even quiet reflection has often a job to efface them.
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Ford Madox Ford |
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bd34d59
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That monstrosity you honour with your name - which is also mine, thank you!
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name
no-more-parades
parade-s-end
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Ford Madox Ford |
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5fac362
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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.
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Ford Madox Ford |