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Thomas Hardy
155 quotes
“If all hearts were open and all desires known — as they would be if people showed their souls — how many gapings, sighings, clenched fists, knotted brows, broad grins, and red eyes should we see in the market-place!”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) first seen 1908 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary entry (18 August 1908), quoted in The Later Years of Thomas Hardy (1930), by Florence Emily Hardy, ch. 10, p. 133
“The value of old age depends upon the person who reaches it. To some men of early performance it is useless. To others, who are late to develop, it just enables them to finish the job.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in The Later Years of Thomas Hardy (1930), by Florence Emily Hardy, ch. 17, p. 212
“At one’s every step forward it rises higher against the south sky, with an obtrusive personality that compels the senses to regard it and consider. The eyes may bend in another direction, but never without the consciousness of its heavy, high-shouldered presence at its point of vantage...The profile of the whole stupendous ruin...is varied with protuberances, which from hereabouts have the animal aspect of warts, wens, knuckles, and hips. It may indeed be likened to an enormous many-limbed organism of an antediluvian time—partaking of the cephalopod in shape—lying lifeless, and covered with a thin green cloth, which hides its substance, while revealing its contour.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People call me a pessimist; and if it is pessimism to think, with Sophocles, that "not to have been born is best," then I do not reject the designation. I never could understand why the word "pessimism" should be such a red rag to many worthy people; and I believe, indeed, that a good deal of the robustious, swaggering optimism of recent literature is at bottom cowardly and insincere. I do not see that we are likely to improve the world by asseverating, however loudly, that black is white, or at least that black is but a necessary contrast and foil, without which white would be white no longer. That is mere juggling with a metaphor. But my pessimism, if pessimism it be, does not involve the assumption that the world is going to the dogs, and that Ahriman is winning all along the line. On the contrary, my practical philosophy is distinctly meliorist. What are my books but one plea against "man's inhumanity to man" — to woman — and to the lower animals? [...] Whatever may be the inherent good or evil of life, it is certain that men make it much worse than it need be. When we have got rid of a thousand remediable ills, it will be time enough to determine whether the ill that is irremediable outweighs the good.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) first seen 1901 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: February 1901 conversation with William Archer, Real Conversations (1904), pp. 46-47
“Few people seem to perceive fully as yet that the most far-reaching consequence of the establishment of the common origin of all species is ethical; that it logically involved a readjustment of altruistic morals, by enlarging, as a necessity of rightness, the application of what has been called the 'Golden Rule' from the area of mere mankind to that of the whole animal kingdom. Possibly Darwin himself did not quite perceive it. While man was deemed to be a creation apart from all other creations, a secondary or tertiary morality was considered good enough to practise towards the 'inferior' races; but no person who reasons nowadays can escape the trying conclusion that this is not maintainable. And though we may not at present see how the principle of equal justice all round is to be carried out in it entirety, I recognise that the League is grappling with the question.”
Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to the (1910)