Quotes from Thomas Hardy

He spoke fluently and unceasingly. He could in this way be one thing and seem another: for instance, he could speak of love and think of dinner; call on the husband to look at the wife; be eager to pay and intend to owe.

A woman who attempts a public career must expect to be treated as public property: what would be an intrusion on a domiciled gentlewoman is a tribute to me.

a day which had a summer face and a winter constitution

She suddenly thought one afternoon, when looking in the glass at her fairness, that there was yet another date, of greater importance to her than those; that of her own death, when all these charms would have disappeared; a day which lay sly and unseen and among all the other days of the year, giving no sign or sound when she annually passed over it; but not the less surely there. When was it? Why did she not feel the chill of each yearly encounter with such a cold relation?

Music drew an angel down, said the poet: but what is that to drawing down worlds!

A hot breeze, as if breathed from the parted lips of some dragon about to swallow the globe,...

The club of Marlott alone lived to uphold the local Cerealia. It had walked for hundreds of years, if not as benefit-club, as votive sisterhood of some sort; and it walked still.

Some women's love of being loved is insatiable ; and so, often, is their love of loving; and in the last case they may find that they can't give it continuously to the chamber-officer appointed by the bishop's licence to receive it.

To indulge one's instinctive and uncontrolled sense of justice and right, was not, he had found, permitted with impunity in an old civilization like ours. It was necessary to act under an acquired and cultivated sense of the same, if you wished to enjoy an average share of comfort and honour; and to let crude loving kindness take care of itself.

La femme n'étonne jamais autant son compagnon que par cette étrange capacité qu'elle possède de croire en des cajoleries qu'elle sait fausses - sauf, à dire vrai, quand elle se montre ouvertement sceptique vis-à-vis de remarques qu'elle sait être vraies.

why the sun do shine on the just and the unjust alike

A young woman's face will turn the north wind, Master Richard: my heart if 'twon't

The creeping plants about the old manor-house were bowed with rows of heavy water drops, which had upon objects behind them the effect of minute lenses of high magnifying power.

Firm the whole fabric stood, Or seemed to stand, and sound As it had stood before. But nothing backward climbs, And when I looked around As at the former times, There was Life—pale and hoar; And slow it said to me, 'Twice-over cannot be!

His had been a love 'which alters when it alteration finds.

putting at the foot also a bunch of the same flowers in a little jar of water to keep them alive. What matter was it that on the outside of the jar the eye of mere observation noted the words 'Keelwell's Marmalade'? The eye of maternal affection did not see them in its vision of higher things.

The boy's face expressed the whole tale of their situation. On that little shape had converged all the inauspiciousness and shadow which had darkened the first union of Jude, and all the accidents, mistakes, fears, errors of the last. He was their nodal point, their focus, their expression in a single term. For the rashness of those parents he had groaned, for their ill assortment he had quaked, and for the misfortunes of these he had died.

TotuÅŸi, experienÅ£a ei consta nu numai dintr-o serie de dezam?giri, ci mai ales dintr-o serie de substituiri. Se întâmplase de mai multe ori ca ceea ce dorea s? nu-i fie acordat, dar s? nu fi dorit ceea ce i se acorda. AÅŸa c? acum privea cu un fel de liniÅŸte interioar? zilele pe veci apuse când Donald fusese iubitul ei tainic ÅŸi se întreba ce lucru nedorit îi va trimite acum cerul în locul lui.

This weakness of character, as it may be called, suggested that he was the sort of man who was born to ache a good deal before the fall of the curtain upon his unnecessary life should signify that all was well with him again.

Proud Songsters The thrushes sing as the sun is going, And the finches whistle in ones and pairs, And as it gets dark loud nightingales In bushes Pipe, as they can when April wears, As if all Time were theirs. These are brand-new birds of twelve-months' growing, Which a year ago, or less than twain, No finches were, nor nightingales, Nor thrushes, But only particles of grain, And earth, and air, and rain.

Why should a man's mind have been thrown into such close, sad, sensational, inexplicable relations with such a precarious object as his body?

Not guessing the cause, there was nothing to remind him that experience is as to intensity, and not as to duration.

Nella difettosa esecuzione del piano ben disposto dell'universo raramente l'invito provoca l'arrivo di chi si invoca; raramente si incontra l'uomo da amare, quando viene l'ora per l'amore. La natura non dice troppo spesso guarda alla povera creatura nel momento in cui il guardare potrebbe portare a una lieta conclusione, nè risponde qui alla carne che grida dove?; finché tutto questo nascondersi e cercarsi diventa un gioco penoso senza mordente.

If these two noticed Angel's growing social ineptness, he noticed their growing mental limitations. Felix seemed to him all Church; Cubbert all College...Each brother candidly recognized there were a few unimportant scores of millions outside in civilized society, persons who were neither University men nor churchmen; but they were to be tolerated rather than reckoned with and respected.