Ford Madox Ford: Quotes about the world

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

Source: The Good Soldier

“The world is full of places to which I want to return”

Source: The Good Soldier

“It is a queer and fantastic world. Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has got the wrong thing. Perhaps you can make head or tail of it; it is beyond me.”

Ford Madox Ford book The Good Soldier

Part Four, Ch. V (pp. 237-238)
Source: The Good Soldier (1915)
Context: It is a queer and fantastic world. Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has got the wrong thing. Perhaps you can make head or tail of it; it is beyond me.
Is there 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 are 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 the devil knows?

“No more Hope, no more Glory, no more parades for you and me any more. Nor for the country… nor for the world, I dare say… None… Gone.”

Ford Madox Ford Parade's End

Parade's End: No More Parades (1925) [Random House, ISBN 0-14-11-8661-5] (p. 307)