Quotes from book
The Man of Property

Name: The Man of Property
Author: John Galsworthy

The Forsyte Saga chronicles the ebbing social power of the commercial upper-middle-class Forsyte family between 1886 and 1920. Soames Forsyte is the brilliantly portrayed central figure, a Victorian who outlives the age. In this, the first of three novels, he pursues the beautiful Irene, who finally agrees to marry him. But Irene balks at her husband's controlling rigidity and falls in love with an architect hired by Soames to build his country house.

“The Forsytes were resentful of something, not individually, but as a family; this resentment expressed itself in an added perfection of raiment, an exuberance of family cordiality, an exaggeration of family importance, and — the sniff. Danger — so indispensable in bringing out the fundamental quality of any society, group, or individual — was what the Forsytes scented; the premonition of danger put a burnish on their armour. For the first time, as a family, they appeared to have an instinct of being in contact, with some strange and unsafe thing.”

John Galsworthy book The Man of Property

The Man of Property (1906) Volume I of The Forsyte Saga.