Thomas Hardy Quotes & Sayings

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

This is the weather the cuckoo likes,
And so do I;
When showers betumble the chestnut spikes,
And nestlings fly — 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. — Thomas Hardy

Measurement of life should be proportioned rather to the intensity of the experience than to its actual length. — Thomas Hardy

She was but a transient impression, half forgotten. — Thomas Hardy

By every law of nature and sex a kiss was the only rejoinder that fitted the mood and the moment, under the suasion of which Sue's undemonstrative regard of him might not inconceivably have changed its temperature. — Thomas Hardy

December morning - sunny and exceedingly mild - might have regarded Gabriel — Thomas Hardy

Rays of male vision seem to have a tickling effect upon virgin faces in rural districts; — Thomas Hardy

That the man and woman were husband and wife, and the parents of the girl in arms there could be little doubt. No other than such relationship would have accounted for the atmosphere of stale familiarity which the trio carried along with them like a nimbus as they moved down the — Thomas Hardy

What I appear, a sick and poor man, is not the worst of me. I am in a chaos of principles
groping in the dark
acting by instinct and not after example. Eight or nine years ago when I came here first, I had a neat stock of fixed opinions, but they dropped away one by one; and the further I get the less sure I am. I doubt if I have anything more for my present rule of life than following inclinations which do me and nobody else any harm, and actually give pleasure to those I love best. — Thomas Hardy

As for his look, it was a natural cheerfulness striving against depression without, and not quite succeeding. The look suggested issolation, but it revealed something more. As Usual with bright natures, the deity that lies ignominiously chained within a ephemeral human carcase shone out of him like a ray. — Thomas Hardy

And to his eyes, casually glancing upward, the silver and black-stemmed birches, with their characteristic tufts, the pale grey boughs of beech, the dark-creviced elm all appeared now as black and flat outlines upon the sky, wherein the white stars twinkled so vehemently that their flickering seemed like the flapping of wings. — Thomas Hardy

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. — Thomas Hardy

When sorrow ceases to be speculative sleep sees her opportunity. — Thomas Hardy

The cruelty of fooled honesty is often great after enlightenment. — Thomas Hardy

That the party was intended to be a truly jovial one there was no room for doubt. — Thomas Hardy

Be a good boy, remember; and be kind to animals and birds, and read all you can. — Thomas Hardy

It is never too late to break off a marriage that's distasteful to you. — Thomas Hardy

Her mouth he had seen nothing to equal on the face of the earth. To a young man with the least fire in him that little upward lift in the middle of her red top lip was distracting, infatuating, maddening. He had never before seen a woman's lips and teeth which forced upon his mind with such persistent iteration the old Elizabethan simile of roses filled with snow. — Thomas Hardy

Love is faith, and faith, like a gathered flower, will live on a long time after nutriment has ceased — Thomas Hardy

Cultivate the art of renunciation. — Thomas Hardy

Heaven opened then, indeed. The flash was almost too novel for its inexpressibly dangerous nature to be at once realized, and they could only comprehend the magnificence of its beauty. It sprang from east, west, north, south, and was a perfect dance of death. The forms of skeletons appeared in the air, shaped with blue fire for bones - dancing, leaping, striding, racing around, and mingling altogether in unparalleled confusion. With these were intertwined undulating snakes of green, and behind these was a broad mass of lesser light. Simultaneously came from every part of the tumbling sky what may be called a shout; since, though no shout ever came near it, it was more of the nature of a shout than of anything else earthly. — Thomas Hardy

It was a fatal omission of Boldwood's that he had never once told her she was beautiful. — Thomas Hardy

She seemed to be occupied with of inner chamber of ideas and to have slight need for visible objects. — Thomas Hardy

A Thunderstorm In Town
She wore a 'terra-cotta' dress,
And we stayed, because of the pelting storm,
Within the hansom's dry recess,
Though the horse had stopped; yea, motionless
We sat on, snug and warm.
Then the downpour ceased, to my sharp sad pain,
And the glass that had screened our forms before
Flew up, and out she sprang to her door:
I should have kissed her if the rain
Had lasted a minute more. — Thomas Hardy

Love, being an extremely exacting usurer (a sense of exorbitant profit, spiritually, by an exchange of hearts, being at the bottom of pure passions, as that of exorbitant profit, bodily or materially, is at the bottom of those of lower atmosphere), every morning Oak's feelings were as sensitive as the money-market in calculations upon his chances. — Thomas Hardy

The position of guests, Tess being honoured with — Thomas Hardy

and when he awoke it was as if he had awakened in hell. It WAS hell - "the hell of conscious failure, — Thomas Hardy

You'll excuse me, Mrs. Graye,' she said, 'but 'tis the old gentleman's birthday, and they always have a lot of people to dinner on that day, though he's getting up in years now. However, none of them are sleepers - she generally keeps the house pretty clear of lodgers (being a lady with no intimate friends, though many acquaintances), which, though it gives us less to do, makes it all the duller for the younger maids in the house.' Mrs. Morris then proceeded to give in fragmentary speeches an outline of the constitution and government of the estate. — Thomas Hardy

He had no wish to converse with her: that his bright lady and himself formed one group, exclusively their own, and containing no others in the world, was enough. — Thomas Hardy

Ladies know what to guard against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks ... — Thomas Hardy

Phases of her childhood lurked in her aspect still. As she walked along to-day, for all her bouncing handsome womanliness, you could sometimes see her twelfth year in her cheeks, or her ninth sparkle from her eyes; and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her mouth now and then. Yet — Thomas Hardy

The chief pleasure connected with asking an opinion lies in not adopting it. — Thomas Hardy

A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. — Thomas Hardy

Feeling had indeed smothered judgment that day. — Thomas Hardy

Silence has sometimes a remarkable power of showing itself as the disembodied sould of feeling wandering without its carcase, and it is then more impressive than speech. In the same way to say a little is often to tell more than to say. — Thomas Hardy

There were a few middle-aged and even elderly women in the train, their silver-wiry hair and wrinkled faces, scourged by time and trouble, having almost a grotesque, certainly a pathetic, appearance in such a jaunty situation. In a true view, perhaps, there was more to be gathered and told of each anxious and experienced one, to whom the years were drawing nigh when she should say, 'I have no pleasure in them', than of her juvenile comrades. But let the elder be passed over here for those under whose bodices the life throbbed quick and warm. — Thomas Hardy

It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession — Thomas Hardy

I determined you should come; and you have come! I have shown my power. — Thomas Hardy

Separation ... though effectual with people of certain humors, is apt to idealize the removed object with others; notably those whose affection, placid and regular as it may be, flows deep and long. — Thomas Hardy

Ah, dear Jude; that's because you are like a totally deaf man
observing people listening to music. You say 'What are they
regarding? Nothing is there.' But something is. — Thomas Hardy

Then if children make so much trouble, why do people have 'em? — Thomas Hardy

In considering what Tess was not, he overlooked that she was, and forgot that the defective can more than the entire. — Thomas Hardy

For a moment he seemed impressed with the speaking loneliness of the scene, or rather with the complete abstraction from all its compass of the sights and sounds of man. — Thomas Hardy

Gabriel's malignant star was assuredly setting fast. — Thomas Hardy

Altogether he was one in whom no man would have seen anything to admire, and in whom no woman would have seen anything to dislike. — Thomas Hardy

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. — Thomas Hardy

Tess was awake before dawn - at the marginal minute of the dark when the grove is still mute, save for one prophetic bird who sings with a clear-voiced conviction that he at least knows the correct time of day, the rest preserving silence as if equally convinced that he is mistaken. — Thomas Hardy

Meanwhile, the trees were just as green as before; the birds sang and the sun shone as clearly now as ever. The familiar surroundings had not darkened because of her grief, nor sickened because of her pain.
She might have seen that what had bowed her head so profoundly -the thought of the world's concern at her situation- was found on an illusion. She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself. — Thomas Hardy

But nothing is more insidious than the evolution of wishes from mere fancies, and of wants from mere wishes. — Thomas Hardy

Their gauzy skirts had brushed up from the grass innumerable flies and butterflies which, unable to escape, remained caged in the transparent tissue as in an aviary. — Thomas Hardy

Perhaps to know her would be to cure himself of this unexpected and unauthorized passion. — Thomas Hardy

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

My eyes were dazed by you for a little, and that was all. — Thomas Hardy

It was terribly beautiful to Tess today, for since her eyes last fell upon it she had learnt that the serpent hisses where the sweet birds sing. — Thomas Hardy

The yard was a little centre of regeneration. Here, with keen edges and smooth curves, were forms in the exact likeness of those he had seen abraded and time-eaten on the walls. These were the ideas in modern prose which the lichened colleges presented in old poetry. Even some of those antiques might have been called prose when they were new. They had done nothing but wait, and had become poetical. How easy to the smallest building; how impossible to most men. — Thomas Hardy

To give too much room to the latent feeling which is rather common in these days among the unappreciated, that because some remarkably successful men are fools, all remarkably unsuccessful men are geniuses.' 'Pretty — Thomas Hardy

Do you think Tess would wish me to try and find her? If not, of course - '
'I don't think she would.'
'Are you sure?'
'I am sure she wouldn't.'
He was turning away; and then he thought of Tess's tender letter.
'I am sure she would!' he retorted passionaltely. 'I know her better than you do.'
'That's very likely, sir; for I have never really known her. — Thomas Hardy

What then? Joy-jaunts, impassioned flings, Love and its ecstasy, Will always have been great things, great things to me! — Thomas Hardy

Once let a maiden admit the possibility of her being stricken with love for some one at a certain hour and place, and the thing is as good as done. — Thomas Hardy

The Dog-star and Aldebaran, pointing to the restless Pleiades, were half-way up the Southern sky, and between them hung Orion, which gorgeous constellation never burnt more vividly than now, as it soared forth above the rim of the landscape. Castor and Pollux with their quiet shine were almost on the meridian: the barren and gloomy Square of Pegasus was creeping round to the north-west; far away through the plantation Vega sparkled like a lamp suspended amid the leafless trees, and Cassiopeia's chair stood daintily poised on the uppermost boughs. "One o'clock," said Gabriel. — Thomas Hardy

The fact that four centuries had neither proved it to be founded on a mistake, inspired any hatred of its purpose, nor given rise to any reaction that had battered it down, invested this simple grey effort of old minds with a repose, if not a grandeur, which a too curious reflection was apt to disturb in its ecclesiastical and military compeers. — Thomas Hardy

If I really seem vain, it is that I am only vain in my ways - not in my heart. The worst women are those vain in their hearts, and not in their ways. — Thomas Hardy

I had a neat stock of fixed opinions, but they dropped away one by one; and the further I get the less sure I am. I doubt if I have anything more for my present rule of life than following inclinations which do me and nobody else any harm, and actually give pleasure to those I love best. There, gentlemen, since you wanted to know how I was getting on, I have told you. Much good may it do you! I cannot explain further here. I perceive there is something wrong somewhere in our social formulas: what it is can only be discovered by men or women with greater insight than mine
if, indeed, they ever discover it
at least in our time. 'For who knoweth what is good for man in this life?
and who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun? — Thomas Hardy

Well, if you wanted to love me, why do you blow so hot and cold?
Why do you ... keep tantalizing me?
I tell you, Tess, I'd take you for a flirt,
For a sit you could catch,
If I didn't know just honest and pure you are. Angel — Thomas Hardy

Is it necessary to add that the echoes of many characteristic tales, dating from that picturesque time, still linger about here, in more or less fragmentary form to be caught by the attentive ear? Some of them I have repeated; most of them I have forgotten; one I have never repeated, and assuredly can never forget. — Thomas Hardy

Sometimes more bitterness is sown in five minutes than can be got rid of in a whole life; — Thomas Hardy

I've been troubled with weak moments lately, 'tis true. I've been drinky once this month already, and I did not go to church a-Sunday, and I dropped a curse or two yesterday; so I don't want to go too far for my safety. Your next world is your next world, and not to be squandered offhand." "I — Thomas Hardy

The first cause worked automatically like a somnambulist, and not reflectively like a sage. — Thomas Hardy

There was alienation in the standing consciousness that his squareness would not fit the round hole that had been prepared for him. — Thomas Hardy

Reminiscence is less an endowment than a disease, and expectation in its only comfortable form
that of absolute faith
is practically an impossibility; whilst in the form of hope and the secondary compounds, patience, impatience, resolve, curiosity, it is a constant fluctuation between pleasure and pain. — Thomas Hardy

You overrate my capacity of love. I don't posess half the warmth of nature you believe me to have. An unprotected childhood in a cold world has beaten gentleness out of me. — Thomas Hardy

in the month-by-month process of editorial criticism and censorship, Hardy never lost his fierce contempt for all forms of 'tampering with natural truth — Thomas Hardy

Deeds of endurance, which seem ordinary in philosophy, are rare in conduct. — Thomas Hardy

Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened. — Thomas Hardy

All the while she wondered if any strange good thing might come of her being in her ancestral land; and some spirit within her rose automatically as the sap in the twigs. It was unexpected youth, surging up anew after its temporary check, and bringing with it hope, and the invincible instinct towards self-delight. — Thomas Hardy

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

Yet Clare's love was doubtless ethereal to a fault, imaginative to impracticability. With these natures, corporeal presence is sometimes less appealing than corporeal absence; the latter creating an ideal presence that conveniently drops the defects of the real. — Thomas Hardy

I am sorry for your disappointment,' he continued, glancing into her face. Their eyes having met, became, as it were, mutually locked together, and the single instant only which good breeding allows as the length of such a look, became trebled: a clear penetrating ray of intelligence had shot from each into each, giving birth to one of those unaccountable sensations which carry home to the heart before the hand has been touched or the merest compliment passed, by something stronger than mathematical proof, the conviction, 'A tie has begun to unite us.' Both faces also unconsciously stated that their owners had been much in each other's thoughts of late. Owen had talked to the young architect of his sister as freely as to Cytherea of the young architect. — Thomas Hardy

I look into my glass,
And view my wasting skin,
And say, 'Would God it came to pass
My heart had shrunk as thin! — Thomas Hardy

Alive enough to have strength to die — Thomas Hardy

Such miserable creatures of circumstance are we all! — Thomas Hardy

I know women are taught by other women that they must never admit the full truth to a man. But the highest form of affection is based on full sincerity on both sides. Not being men, these women don't know that in looking back on those he has had tender relations with, a man's heart returns closest to her who was the soul of truth in her conduct. The better class of man, even if caught by airy affectations of dodging and parrying, is not retained by them. A Nemesis attends the woman who plays the game of elusiveness too often, in the utter contempt for her that, sooner or later, her old admirers feel; under which they allow her to go unlamented to her grave. — Thomas Hardy

...you have torn my life all to pieces.. made me a victim, a caged bird! — Thomas Hardy

My opinion is that a poet should express the emotion of all the ages and the thought of his own. — Thomas Hardy

Though Farmer Troutham had just hurt him, he was a boy who could not himself bear to hurt anything. He had never brought home a nest of young birds without lying awake in misery half the night after, and often reinstating them and the nest in their original place the next morning. He could scarcely bear to see trees cut down or lopped, from a fancy that it hurt them; and late pruning, when the sap was up and the tree bled profusely, had been a positive grief to him in his infancy. This weakness of character, as it may be called, suggested that he was the sort of man who was born to ache a good deal before the fall of the curtain upon his unnecessary life should signify that all was well with him again. He carefully picked his way on tiptoe among the earthworms, without killing a single one. — Thomas Hardy

A great statesman thinks several times, and acts; a young lady acts, and thinks several times. — Thomas Hardy

Durbeyfield was what was locally called a slack-twisted fellow; he had good strength to work at times; but the times could not be relied on to coincide with the hours of requirement; and, having been unaccustomed to the regular toil of the day-labourer, he was not particularly persistent when they did so coincide. — Thomas Hardy

Having begun to love you, I love you for ever - in all changes, in all disgraces, because you are yourself. — Thomas Hardy

A little stimulated at not finding her ready and waiting - so fanciful are men! - he hastened on... — Thomas Hardy

The inspection of these chasms brought him a second pulsation of that old horror which he had used to describe to Viviette as produced in him by bottomlessness in the north heaven. The ghostly finger of limitless vacancy touched him now on the other side. — Thomas Hardy

So that, whatever the stars were made for, they were not made to please our eyes. It is just the same in everything; nothing is made for man. — Thomas Hardy

It was the week after Easter holidays, and he was journeying along with Smart the mare and the light spring-cart, watching the damp slopes of the hill-sides as they steamed in the warmth of the sun, which at this unsettled season shone on the grass with the freshness of an occasional inspector rather than as an accustomed proprietor. — Thomas Hardy

It was a night when sorrow may come to the brightest without causing any great sense of incongruity: when, with impressible persons, love becomes solicitousness, hope sinks to misgiving, and faith to hope: when the exercise of memory does not stir feelings of regret at opportunities for ambition that have been passed by, and anticipation does not prompt to enterprise. The — Thomas Hardy

Away from courting me - " Gabriel expanded. "I'm sorry to have made you run so fast, my dear," he said, with a grateful sense of favours — Thomas Hardy

He had a quick comprehension and considerable force of character; but, being without the power to combine them, the comprehension became engaged with trivialities whilst waiting for the will to direct it, and the force wasted itself in useless grooves through unheeding the comprehension. — Thomas Hardy

She looked towards the western sky, which was now aglow like some vast foundry wherein new worlds were cast — Thomas Hardy

I have seen your mother; and I will never see her again! — Thomas Hardy

She could have never believed in the morning that her colorless inner world would before night become as animated as water under a microscope. — Thomas Hardy

Fear is the mother of foresight. — Thomas Hardy