Quotes from Thomas Hardy

And winter, which modifies the note of such trees as shed their leaves, does not destroy its individuality.

She knew how to hit to a hair's-breadth that moment of evening when the light and the darkness are so evenly balanced that the constraint of day and the suspense of night neutralize each other, leaving absolute mental liberty.

era quel tocco di imperfezione sopra la presunta perfezione che dava dolcezza, perché era esso ad impartire umanità.

There are two ways of getting rid of sorrows: one by living them down, the other by drowning them. The coachman drowned his. He informed her that her luggage

I am certain one ought to be allowed to undo what one has done so ignorantly ! I daresay it happens to lots of women; only they submit, and I kick.... When people of a later age look back upon the barbarous customs and superstitions of the times that we have the unhappiness to live in, what will they say!

a true narrative like time and tide must run its course and would respect no man.

an indefinite courtship soon injures a woman's position and credit, sooner than you think.' 'Baptista

there's life there's hope is a conviction not so entirely unknown to the betrayed as some amiable theorists would have us believe.

Those who have the power of reproaching in silence may find it a means more effective than words. There are accents in the eye which are not on the tongue, and more tales come from pale lips than can enter an ear. It is both the grandeur and the pain of the remoter moods that they avoid the pathway of sound. Boldwood's look was unanswerable.

It is never too late to break off a marriage that's distasteful to you. 

Their eyes having met, became, as it were, mutually locked together, ... a clear penetrating ray of intelligence had shot from each into each, giving birth to ..., the conviction, 'A tie has begun to unite us.

If men only knew the staleness of the freshest of us! that nine times out of ten the first love they think they are winning from a woman is but the hulk of an old wrecked affection, fitted with new sails and re-used.

Then he stood with his back to the fire regarding her, and saw in her almost a divinity.

Their eyes having met, became, as it were, mutually locked together, ... a clear penetrating ray of intelligence had shot from each into each, giving birth to ..., the conviction

Allow me to come with you,' he said, accompanying her to the door, and again showing by his behaviour how much he was impressed with her. His influence over her had vanished with the musical chords, and she turned her back upon him. 'May I come?' he repeated. 'No, no. The distance is not a quarter of a mile — it is really not necessary, thank you,' she said quietly. And

Their eyes having met, became, as it were, mutually locked together, ... a clear penetrating ray of intelligence had shot from each into each, giving birth to ..., the conviction, 'A tie has begun to unite us.'_

She tried to pray to God, but it was her husband who really had her supplication. Her idolatry of this man was such that she herself almost feared it to be ill-omened. She was conscious of the notion expressed by Friar Lawerence, These violent delights have violent ends. It might be too desperate for human conditions--too rank, too wild, too deadly.

Rolliver's inn, the single alehouse at this end of the long and broken village, could only boast of an off-licence; hence, as nobody could legally drink on the premises, the amount of overt accommodation for consumers was strictly limited to a little board

He was young, and his face, if not exactly handsome, approached so near to handsome that nobody would have contradicted an assertion that it really was so in its natural colour.

Oh my love, my love, why do I love you so? she whispered there alone; for she you love is not myself, but one in my image; the one I might have been!

More than ever he longed to be in some world where personal ambition was not the only recognized form of progress—such, perhaps, as might have been the case at some time or other in the silvery globe then shining upon him.

In justice to desponding men, it is as well to remember that the brighter endurance of women at these epochs — invaluable, sweet, angelic, as it is — owes more of its origin to a narrower vision that shuts out many of the leaden-eyed despairs in the van, than to a hopefulness intense enough to quell them.

As to our going on together as we were going, in a sort of friendly way, the people round us would have made it unable to continue. Their views of the relations of man and woman are limited, as is proved by their expelling me from the school. Their philosophy only recognizes relations based on animal desire. The wide field of strong attachment where desire plays, at least, only a secondary part, is ignored by them—the part of—who is it?—Venus Urania.

To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement.