Thomas Hardy quotes - page 4

The business of the poet and the novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things. (Thomas Hardy)
See what deceits love sows in honest minds! View quote
Thomas Hardy
She was at that modulating point between indifference and love, at the stage called having a fancy for. It occurs once in the history of the most gigantic passions, and it is a period when they are in the hands of the weakest will. View quote
Thomas Hardy
Her affection for him was now the breath and life of Tess's being; it enveloped her as a photosphere, irradiated her into forgetfulness of her past sorrows, keeping back the gloomy spectres that would persist in their attempts to touch her-doubt, fear, moodiness, care, shame. She knew that they were waiting like wolves just outside the circumscribing light, but she had long spells of power to keep them in hungry subjection there. View quote
Thomas Hardy
Why didn't you tell me there was danger? Why didn't you warn me? Ladies know what to guard against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks; but I never had the chance of discovering in that way; and you did not help me! View quote
Thomas Hardy
They spoke very little of their mutual feeling; pretty phrases and warm expressions being probably unnecessary between such tried friends. View quote
Thomas Hardy
A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. Circumspection and devotion are a contradiction in terms. View quote
Thomas Hardy
If we be doomed to marry, we marry; if we be doomed to remain single we do. View quote
Thomas Hardy
Do you know that I have undergone three quarters of this labour entirely for the sake of the fourth quarter? View quote
Thomas Hardy
Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. View quote
Thomas Hardy
Where we are would be Paradise to me, if you would only make it so. (Thomas Hardy)
She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself. To all humankind besides Tess was only a passing thought. Even to friends she was no more than a frequently passing thought. View quote
Thomas Hardy
To be loved to madness--such was her great desire. Love was to her the one cordial which could drive away the eating loneliness of her days. And she seemed to long for the abstraction called passionate love more than for any particular lover. View quote
Thomas Hardy
Is a woman a thinking unit at all, or a fraction always wanting its integer? View quote
Thomas Hardy
Indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not. View quote
Thomas Hardy
The perfect woman, you see [is] a working-woman; not an idler; not a fine lady; but one who [uses] her hands and her head and her heart for the good of others. View quote
Thomas Hardy
It was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity. View quote
Thomas Hardy
Well, these sad and hopeless obstacles are welcome in one sense, for they enable us to look with indifference upon the cruel satires that Fate loves to indulge in. View quote
Thomas Hardy
I have felt lately, more and more, that my present way of living is bad in every respect. View quote
Thomas Hardy
I want to question my belief, so that what is left after I have questioned it, will be even stronger. View quote
Thomas Hardy
A blaze of love and extinction, was better than a lantern glimmer of the same which should last long years. (Thomas Hardy)
Bless thy simplicity, Tess. View quote
Thomas Hardy
We ought to have lived in mental communion, and no more. View quote
Thomas Hardy
So do flux and reflux--the rhythm of change--alternate and persist in everything under the sky. View quote
Thomas Hardy
And Troy's deformities lay deep down from a woman's vision, whilst his embellishments were upon the very surface thus contrasting with homely Oak, whose defects were patent to the blindest, and whose virtues were as metals in a mine. View quote
Thomas Hardy