Ford Madox Ford Quotes About Books

Quotes about: Books

• For the judging of contemporary literature the only test is one's personal taste. If you much like a new book, you must call it literature even though you find no other soul to agree with you, and if you dislike a book you must declare that it is not literature though a million voices should shout you that you are wrong. The ultimate decision will be made by Time.

  Ford Madox Ford

  Book, Voice, Judging

  Ford Madox Ford (1938). “The March of Literature: From Confucius' Day to Our Own”, p.11, Dalkey Archive Press

• Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.

  Ford Madox Ford

  Book, Ninety Nine, Quality

• Only two classes of books are of universal appeal. The very best and the very worst.

  Ford Madox Ford

  Book, Class, Two

  Joseph Conrad pt. 3, sec. 1 (1924)

• 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.

  Ford Madox Ford

  Book, Reading, Novelists

  Ford Madox Ford (1964). “Critical Writings of Ford Madox Ford”, p.76, U of Nebraska Press

• 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.

  Ford Madox Ford

  Beautiful, Encouragement, Loneliness

  Ford Madox Ford (2003). “The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion”, p.125, Broadview Press

• 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.

  Ford Madox Ford

  Book, Writing, Thinking

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