Quotes from Thomas Hardy

This supreme instance of Troy's goodness fell upon Gabriel's ears like the thirteenth stroke of a crazy clock.

Don't that make your bosom plim?

Like a greater than himself, to the critical question at the critical time he did not answer: and they were again silent.

Well, if you wanted to love me, why do you blow so hot and cold? Why do you... keep tantalizing me -Angel

the magnitude of lives is not as to their external displacements, but as to their subjective experiences. The impressionable peasant leads a larger, fuller, more dramatic life than the pachydermatous king.

She is lazy and dissatisfied. But that is not all of it. Supposing her to be as good a woman as any you can find, which she certainly is not, why do you wish to connect yourself with anybody at present?

What then? Joy-jaunts, impassioned flings, Love and its ecstasy, Will always have been great things, great things to me!

It has been sometimes argued that there is no truer criterion of the vitality of any given art-period than the power of the master-spirits of that time in grotesque; and certainly in the instance of Gothic art there is no disputing the proposition.

But there were certain early days in Casterbridge- days of firmamental exhaustion which followed angry south-westerly tempests-when, if the sun shone, the air was like velvet.

But I wish to be enlightened.' 'Let me caution you against it.' 'Is enlightenment on the subject, then, so terrible?' 'Yes, indeed.' She laughingly declared that nothing could have so piqued her curiosity as his statement.

for unfortunately the person most dogged in the belief in a false reputation is always that one, the possessor, who has the best means of knowing that it is not true.

The chief pleasure connected with asking an opinion lies in not adopting it.

it might have resulted far better for mankind if Greece had been the source of the religion of modern civilization, and not Palestine

I have been thinking, she continued, still in the tone of one brimful of feeling, that the social moulds civilization fits us into have no more relation to our actual shapes than the conventional shapes of the constellations have to the real star-patterns. I am called Mrs. Richard Phillotson, living a calm wedded life with my counterpart of that name. But I am not really Mrs. Richard Phillotson, but a woman tossed about, all alone, with aberrant passions, and unaccountable antipathies...

You were nothing to me once, and I was contented; you are now nothing to me again, and how different the second nothing is from the first! Would to God you had never taken me up, since it was only to throw me down!

The village was shutting its eyes. Candles and lamps were being put out everywhere: she could inwardly behold the extinguisher and the extended hand.

An Elizabeth in brain and a Mary Stuart in spirit.

Though fervent was our vow, Though ruddily ran our pleasure, Bliss has fulfilled its measure, And sees its sentence now. Ache deep; but make no moans: Smile out; but stilly suffer: The paths of love are rougher Than thoroughfares of stones.

The Fawleys were not made for wedlock: it never seemed to sit well upon us. There's sommat in our blood that won't take kindly to the notion of being bound to do what we do readily enough if not bound. ...

Cry about one thing in life, cry about all; one thread runs through the whole piece.

The cruelty of fooled honesty is often great after enlightenment.

All the while she wondered if any strange good thing might come of her being in her ancestral land; and some spirit within her rose automatically as the sap in the twigs. It was unexpected youth, surging up anew after its temporary check, and bringing with it hope, and the invincible instinct towards self-delight.

Tell me now, Angel, do you think we shall meet again after we are dead? I want to know. He kissed her to avoid a reply at such a time. O, Angel--I fear that means no! said she, with a suppressed sob. And I wanted so to see you again-- so much, so much! What--not even you and I, Angel, who love each other so well?

Tess was no insignificant creature to toy with and dismiss; but a woman living her precious life—a life which, to herself who endured or enjoyed it, possessed as great a dimension as the life of the mightiest to himself.