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Thomas Hardy
155 quotes
“To discover evil in a new friend is to most people only an additional experience.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“With all, the beautiful things of the earth become more dear as they elude pursuit; but with some natures utter elusion is the one special event which will make a passing love permanent for ever.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is commonly said that no man was ever converted by argument, but there is a single one which will make any Laodicean in England, let him be once love-sick, wear prayer-books and become a zealous Episcopalian – the argument that his sweetheart can be seen from his pew.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. At the passing of the breeze the fir-trees sob and moan no less distinctly than they rock; the holly whistles as it battles with itself; the ash hisses amid its quiverings; the beech rustles while its flat boughs rise and fall.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Good, but not religious-good.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For of all the miseries attaching to miserable love, the worst is the misery of thinking that the passion which is the cause of them all may cease.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Or, to state his character as it stood in the scale of public opinion, when his friends and critics were in tantrums, he was considered rather a bad man; when they were pleased, he was rather a good man; when they were neither, he was a man whose moral colour was a kind of pepper-and-salt mixture.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The sovereign brilliancy of Sirius pierced the eye with a steely glitter, the star called Capella was yellow, Aldebaran and Betelgueux shone with a fiery red. 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.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 in isolation.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Love is a possible strength, in an actual weakness. Marriage transforms a distraction into a support, the power of which should be, and happily often is, in direct proportion to the degree of imbecility it supplants.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And at home by the fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be — and whenever I look up, there will be you.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A nice unparticular man.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All romances end at marriage.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Work hard and be poor, do nothing and get more.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. Circumspection and devotion are a contradiction in terms.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You calculated how to be uncalculating, and are natural by art!”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have seldom known a man cunning with his brush who was not simple with his tongue; or, indeed, any skill in particular that was not allied to general stupidity.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for its floor.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In fact, precisely at this transitional point of its nightly roll into darkness the great and particular glory of the Egdon waste began, and nobody could be said to understand the heath who had not been there at such a time. It could best be felt when it could not clearly be seen, its complete effect and explanation lying in this and the succeeding hours before the next dawn; then, and only then, did it tell its true tale.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank blooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was at present a place perfectly accordant with man's nature—neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly; neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame; but, like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony. As with some persons who have long lived apart, solitude seemed to look out of its countenance. It had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The great inviolate place had an ancient permanence which the sea cannot claim. Who can say of a particular sea that it is old? Distilled by the sun, kneaded by the moon, it is renewed in a year, in a day, or in an hour. The sea changed, the fields changed, the rivers, the villages, and the people changed, yet Egdon remained.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Above the plain rose the hill, above the hill rose the barrow, and above the barrow rose the figure. Above the figure was nothing that could be mapped elsewhere than on a celestial globe.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To dwell on a heath without studying its meanings was like wedding a foreigner without learning his tongue. The subtle beauties of the heath were lost to Eustacia; she only caught its vapours. An environment which would have made a contented woman a poet, a suffering woman a devotee, a pious woman a psalmist, even a giddy woman thoughtful, made a rebellious woman saturnine.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ah," she said to herself, "want of an object to live for—that's all is the matter with me!”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The rural world was not ripe for him. A man should be only partially before his time—to be completely to the vanward in aspirations is fatal to fame. Had Philip's warlike son been intellectually so far ahead as to have attempted civilization without bloodshed, he would have been twice the godlike hero that he seemed, but nobody would have heard of an Alexander.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A well proportioned mind is one which shows no particular bias; one of which we may safely say that it will never cause its owner to be confined as a madman, tortured as a heretic, or crucified as a blasphemer. Also, on the other hand, that it will never cause him to be applauded as a prophet, revered as a priest, or exalted as a king. Its usual blessings are happiness and mediocrity.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The heath and changes of weather were quite blotted out from their eyes for the present. They were enclosed in a sort of luminous mist, which hid from them surroundings of any inharmonious colour, and gave to all things the character of light. When it rained they were charmed, because they could remain indoors together all day with such a show of reason; when it was fine they were charmed, because they could sit together on the hills. They were like those double stars which revolve round and round each other, and from a distance appear to be one.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When that half-burnt log and those cinders were alight she was alive! Little has been changed here yet. I can do nothing. My life creeps like a snail.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There's reason for ghastliness. Eustacia, you have held my happiness in the hollow of your hand, and like a devil you have dashed it down!”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How bewitched I was! How could there be any good in a woman that everybody spoke ill of?”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Human beings, in their generous endeavour to construct a hypothesis that shall not degrade a First Cause, have always hesitated to conceive a dominant power of lower moral quality than their own; and, even while they sit down and weep by the waters of Babylon, invent excuses for the oppression which prompts their tears.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you are cheerful, and wish to remain so, leave the study of astronomy alone. Of all the sciences, it alone deserves the character of the terrible.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“See what deceits love sows in honest minds!”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She had the hard, half-apathetic expression of one who deems anything possible at the hands of Time and Chance except, perhaps, fair play.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And all her shining keys will be took from her, and her cupboards opened; and little things a' didn't wish seen, anybody will see; and her wishes and ways will all be as nothing!”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One grievous failing of Elizabeth’s was her occasional pretty and picturesque use of dialect words—those terrible marks of the beast to the truly genteel.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Who is such a reprobate as I! And yet it seems that even I be in Somebody's hand!”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But the ingenious machinery contrived by the Gods for reducing human possibilities of amelioration to a minimum — which arranges that wisdom to do shall come pari passu with the departure of zest for doing — stood in the way of all that.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That Elizabeth-Jane Farfrae be not told of my death, or made to grieve on account of me. And that I be not bury'd in consecrated ground. And that no sexton be asked to toll the bell. And that nobody is wished to see my dead body. And that no murners walk behind me at my funeral. And that no flours be planted on my grave. And that no man remember me.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Her strong sense that neither she nor any human being deserved less than was given, did not blind her to the fact that there were others receiving less who had deserved much more. And in being forced to class herself among the fortunate she did not cease to wonder at the persistence of the unforeseen, when the one to whom such unbroken tranquility had been accorded in the adult stage was she whose youth had seemed to teach that happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was one of those sequestered spots outside the gates of the world where may usually be found more meditation than action, and more passivity than meditation; where reasoning proceeds on narrow premises, and results in inferences wildly imaginative; yet where, from time to time, no less than in other places, dramas of a grandeur and unity truly Sophoclean are enacted in the real, by virtue of the concentrated passions and closely knit interdependence of the lives therein.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In truth, her ante-nuptial regard for Fitzpiers had been rather of the quality of awe towards a superior being than of tender solicitude for a lover.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All that blooth means heavy autumn work for him and his hands.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“By the time that Melbury reached the park, he was prepared to go any lengths in combating this rank and reckless errantry of his daughter's husband. He would fetch home Edgar Fitzpiers to-night by some means, rough or fair: in his view there could come of his interference nothing worse than what existed at present. And yet to every bad there is a worse.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A novel is an impression, not an argument.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) first seen 1892 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface to the Fifth Edition (July 1892)
“'Twas a little one-eyed, blinking sort o' place.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source