Quotes from Thomas Hardy

Such miserable creatures of circumstance are we all!

They were as sublime as the moon and stars above them, and the moon ans stars were as ardent as they.

Life is an oasis which is submerged in the swirling waves of sorrows and agonies.

It was still early, and the sun's lower limb was just free of the hill, his rays, ungenial and peering, addressed the eye rather than the touch as yet.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing alive enough to have strength to die. (from Neutral Tones)

Bygones would never be complete bygones till she was a bygone herself.

To find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable and expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability, induction--every kind of evidence in the logician's list--have united to persuade consciousness that it is quite alone.

you dear, sweet, tantalizing phantom--hardly flesh at all; so that when I put my arms round you I almost expect them to pass through you as through air!

Love is an utterly bygone, sorry, worn-out, miserable thing with me- for him or anyone else.

What at night had been perfect and ideal was by day the more or less defective real.

The sky was clear -- remarkably clear -- and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse.

Because what's the use of learning that I am one of a long row only - finding out that there is set down in some old book somebody just like me, and to know that I shall only act her part; making me sad, that's all. The best is not to remember your nature and your past doings have been just like thousands' and thousands', and that your coming life and doings'll be like thousands' and thousands'.

But you will never realize that an incident which filled but a degree in the circle of your thoughts covered the whole circumference of mine. No person can see exactly what and where another's horizon is.

When I want a broad-minded opinion for general enlightenment, distinct from special advice, I never go to a man who deals in the subject professionally. So I like the parson's opinion on law, the lawyer's on doctoring, the doctor's on business, and my business-man's . . . on morals.

She's brim full of poetry - actualized poetry, if I may use the expression. She lives what paper-poets only write...

The real sin ma'am, in my mind lies in thinking of ever wedding with a man you don't love honest and true.

Nameless, unknown to me as you were, I couldn't forget your voice!' 'For how long?' 'O - ever so long. Days and days.' 'Days and days! Only days and days? O, the heart of a man! Days and days!' 'But, my dear madam, I had not known you more than a day or two. It was not a full-blown love - it was the merest bud - red, fresh, vivid, but small. It was a colossal passion in embryo. It never returned.

You simply mean that you flirted outrageously with him, poor old chap, and then repented, and to make reparation, married him, though you tortured yourself to death by doing it.

Of love it may be said, the less earthly the less demonstrative. In its absolutely indestructible form it reaches a profundity in which all exhibition of itself is painful.

Here we suffer grief and pain, Here we meet to part again; In Heaven we part no more.

Silence has sometimes a remarkable power of showing itself as the disembodied soul of feeling wandering without its carcase, and it is then more impressive than speech.

Women are never tired of bewailing man's fickleness in love, but they only seem to snub his constancy.

Oak had nothing finished and ready to say as yet, and not being able to frame love phrases which end where they begin; passionate tales——Full of sound and fury —signifying nothing—he said no word at all.

As Antigone said, I am neither a dweller among men nor ghosts.