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
Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Reading provides insight into the overall quality of a work.
Ford Madox Ford's quote suggests that by delving into a specific part of a text, such as page ninety-nine, one can gain a comprehensive understanding of the entire work. This highlights the power of literature and how targeted engagement with a text can illuminate its broader themes, characters, and quality, embodying the essence of thoughtful reading.
Themes
ReadingInsightLiteratureUnderstandingQuality
In practice
Example use cases
During a book club meeting, someone cites this quote to encourage deeper analysis of a novel.
More from Ford Madox Ford
All quotes βMind, 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
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.
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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