Boldwood Quotes & Sayings

What a way Oak had, she thought, of enduring things. Boldwood, who seemed so much deeper and higher and stronger in feeling than Gabriel, had not yet learnt, any more than she herself, the simple lesson which Oak showed a mastery of by every turn and look he gave - that among the multitude of interests by which he was surrounded, those which affected his personal well-being were not the most absorbing and important in his eyes. Oak meditatively looked upon the horizon of circumstances without any special regard to his own standpoint in the midst. That was how she would wish to be — Thomas Hardy

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

Boldwood looked at her - not slily, critically, or understandingly, but blankly at gaze, in the way a reaper looks up at a passing train - as something foreign to his element, and but dimly understood. To Boldwood women had been remote phenomena rather than necessary complements - comets of such uncertain aspect, movement, and permanence, that whether their orbits were as geometrical, unchangeable, and as subject to laws as his own, or as absolutely erratic as they superficially appeared, he had not deemed it his duty to consider. He — Thomas Hardy

Boldwood, whose unreasoning devotion to Bathsheba could only be characterized as a fond madness which neither time nor circumstance, evil nor good report, could weaken or destroy. This fevered hope had grown up again like a grain of mustard-seed during the quiet which followed the hasty conjecture that Troy was drowned. He nourished it fearfully, and almost shunned the contemplation of it in earnest, lest facts should reveal the wildness of the dream. Bathsheba having at last been persuaded — Thomas Hardy

Oak was just thinking that whatever he
himself might have suffered from Bathsheba's marriage, here was a
man who had suffered more, when Boldwood spoke in a changed
voice - that of one who yearned to make a confidence and relieve his
heart by an outpouring. — Thomas Hardy

There was a change in Boldwood's exterior from its former impassibleness; and his face showed that he was now living outside his defences for the first time, and with a fearful sense of exposure. It is the usual experience of strong natures when they love. — Thomas Hardy

The difference between love and respect was markedly shown in her conduct. Bathsheba had spoken of her interest in Boldwood with the greatest freedom to Liddy, but she only communed with her own heart concerning Troy. — Thomas Hardy