Images from Works of John Galsworthy   By: John Galsworthy (1867-1933)

THE WORKS OF JOHN GALSWORTHY

QUOTES

Attack his fleas though he was supposed to have none

Dogs: with rudiments of altruism and a sense of God

Don't hurt others more than is absolutely necessary

Early morning does not mince words

Era which had canonised hypocrisy

Forgiven me; but she could never forget

Health He did not want it at such cost

Is anything more pathetic than the faith of the young?

Law takes a low view of human nature

Let her come to me as she will, when she will, not at all if she will not

Love has no age, no limit; and no death

Never to see yourself as others see you

Old men learn to forego their whims

People who don't live are wonderfully preserved

Perching place; never never her cage!

Putting up a brave show of being natural

Socialists: they want our goods

Thank you for that good lie

To seem to be respectable was to be

You have to buy experience

COURAGE

COURAGE Is but a word, and yet, of words, The only sentinel of permanence; The ruddy watch fire of cold winter days, We steal its comfort, lift our weary swords, And on. For faith without it has no sense; And love to wind of doubt and tremor sways; And life for ever quaking marsh must tread.

Laws give it not; before it prayer will blush; Hope has it not; nor pride of being true; 'Tis the mysterious soul which never yields, But hales us on and on to breast the rush Of all the fortunes we shall happen through. And when Death calls across his shadowy fields Dying, it answers: "Here! I am not dead!"

SOME FAVORITE PASSAGES

The simple truth, which underlies the whole story, that where sex attraction is utterly and definitely lacking in one partner to a union, no amount of pity, or reason, or duty, or what not, can overcome a repulsion implicit in Nature.

The tragedy of whose life is the very simple, uncontrollable tragedy of being unlovable, without quite a thick enough skin to be thoroughly unconscious of the fact. Not even Fleur loves Soames as he feels he ought to be loved. But in pitying Soames, readers incline, perhaps, to animus against Irene: After all, they think, he wasn't a bad fellow, it wasn't his fault; she ought to have forgiven him, and so on!

"Let the dead Past bury its dead" would be a better saying if the Past ever died. The persistence of the Past is one of those tragi comic blessings which each new age denies, coming cocksure on to the stage to mouth its claim to a perfect novelty.

The figure of Irene, never, as the reader may possibly have observed, present, except through the senses of other characters, is a concretion of disturbing Beauty impinging on a possessive world.

She turned back into the drawing room; but in a minute came out, and stood as if listening. Then she came stealing up the stairs, with a kitten in her arms. He could see her face bent over the little beast, which was purring against her neck. Why couldn't she look at him like that?

But though the impingement of Beauty and the claims of Freedom on a possessive world are the main prepossessions of the Forsyte Saga, it cannot be absolved from the charge of embalming the upper middle class.

When a Forsyte was engaged, married, or born, the Forsytes were present; when a Forsyte died but no Forsyte had as yet died; they did not die; death being contrary to their principles, they took precautions against it, the instinctive precautions of highly vitalized persons who resent encroachments on their property.

"It's my opinion," he said unexpectedly, "that it's just as well as it is."

The eldest by some years of all the Forsytes, she held a peculiar position amongst them. Opportunists and egotists one and all though not, indeed, more so than their neighbours they quailed before her incorruptible figure, and, when opportunities were too strong, what could they do but avoid her!