Quotes from Thomas Hardy

Tess had never before known a time in which the thread of her life was so distinctly twisted of two strands, positive pleasure and positive pain.

Sanderson, who was also blind, gave excellent lectures on colour, and taught others the theory of ideas which they had and he had not. In the social sphere these gifted ones are mostly women; they can watch a world which they never saw, and estimate forces of which they have only heard. We call it intuition.

The Wound I climbed to the crest, And, fog-festooned, The sun lay west Like a crimson wound: Like that wound of mine Of which none knew, For I'd given no sign That it pierced me through.

Jude) had, he verily believed, overcome all tendency to fly to liquor—which, indeed, he had never done from taste, but merely as an escape from intolerable misery of mind. Yet he perceived with despondency that, taken all round, he was a man of too many passions to make a good clergyman; the utmost he could hope for was that in a life of constant internal warfare between flesh and spirit the former might not always be victorious.

While they sipped Sue went to the window and thoughtfully said, It is such a beautiful sunset, Richard. They are mostly beautiful from here, owing to the rays crossing the mist of the vale. But I lose them all, as they don't shine into this gloomy corner where I lie. Wouldn't you like to see this particular one? It is like heaven opened. Ah yes! But I can't.

What was the past to me as soon as I met you? It was a dead thing altogether. I became another woman, filled full of new life from you. How could I be the early one? Why do you not see this? Dear, if you would only be a little more conceited, and believe in yourself so far as to see that you was strong enough to work this change in me, you would perhaps be in a mind to come to me, your poor wife.

I thought you were the ghost of yourself.

To be yearning for the difficult, to be weary of the offered: to care for the remote, to dislike the near: it was Wildeve's nature always. This is the true mark of the man of sentiment.

Yes, 'tis rather a rum course," said Venn, in the bland tone of one comfortably resigned to sins he could no longer overcome.

Bathsheba you are the first woman of any shade or nature that I have ever looked at to love, and it is the having been so near claiming you for my own that makes this denial so hard to bear. How nearly you promised me! But I don't speak now to move your heart, and make you grieve because of my pain; it is no use, that. I must bear it; my pain would get no less by paining you.

I see your face in every scene of my dreams, and I hear your voice in every sound. I wish I did not. It is too much what I feel. They say such love never lasts

O sweet To-morrow!— After to-day There will away This sense of sorrow. Then let us borrow Hope, for a gleaming Soon will be streaming, Dimmed by no gray— No gray!

Truth like a bastard comes into the world Never without ill-fame to him who gives her birth

A novel which does moral injury to a dozen imbeciles, and has bracing results upon a thousand intellects of normal vigor, can justify its existence; and probably a novel was never written by the purest-minded author for which there could not be found some moral invalid or other whom it was capable of harming. The Profitable Reading of Fiction 1888

The highest architectural cunning could have done nothing to make Hintock House dry and salubrious; and ruthless ignorance could have done little to make it unpicturesque. It was vegetable nature's own home; a spot to inspire the painter and poet of still life—if they did not suffer too much from the relaxing atmosphere—and to draw groans from the gregariously disposed.

In ogni innamorato c'è sempre una forza enorme che non ha finché è un uomo libero; ma nell'uomo libero c'è un'ampiezza di vedute che cercheremmo invano in un innamorato. Dove c'è molta parzialità ci sarà sempre anche una certa ristrettezza mentale, e l'amore, sebbene comporti maggiori emozioni, comporta anche minore perspicacia. (Via dalla pazza folla)

To escape the past and all that appertained thereto was to annihilate it, and to do that she would have to get away

There was something of the habitude of the wild animal in the unreflecting instinct with which she rambled on—disconnecting herself by littles from her eventful past at every step, obliterating her identity.

On the contrary, you speak so beautifully that I could listen all day.' The astronomer threw a searching glance upon her for a moment; but there was no satire in the warm soft eyes which met his own with a luxurious contemplative interest. 'Say more of it to me,' she continued, in a voice not far removed from coaxing.

Let me look right into your moonlit face, and dwell on every line and curve in it!

It seemed impossible that modern thought could house itself in such decrepit and superseded chambers.

Down there they are dubious and askance; there nobody thinks as I, But mind-chains do not clank where one's next neighbour is the sky.

However, we are very apt to think extremes of people. I shouldn't wonder after all if it wasn't a little of both -- just between the two -- rather cruelly used and rather reserved.

When a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away. One source of her inadequacy is the novelty of the occasion. She has never had practice in making the best of such a condition. Weakness is doubly weak by being new.