The war had made a man of him! It had coarsened him and hardened him. There was no other way to look at it. It had made him reach a point at which he would no longer stand unbearable things.
Ford Madox FordRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Love is a journey that requires patience and time to develop deep connections.
This quote speaks to the nature of love as a gradual process, emphasizing that meaningful relationships take time to cultivate. The notion of waiting together signifies the mutual investment in a relationship, where shared experiences and conversations build intimacy, leading to a profound understanding of one another over an extended period.
Themes
LovePatienceIntimacyRelationshipsTime
In practice
Example use cases
This quote is perfect for a wedding speech highlighting the journey of love.
More from Ford Madox Ford
All quotes →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 FordRead
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 FordRead
Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.
Ford Madox FordRead
It is not merely that people must die and people must suffer, if not here, then there. But what is dreadful is that the world goes on and people go on being stupidly cruel - in the old ways and all the time.
Ford Madox FordRead
The first thing you have to consider when writing a novel is your story, and then your story - and then your story!
Ford Madox FordRead
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