Famous Thomas Hardy Quotations

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"The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes."
by Thomas Hardy
"A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible."
by Thomas Hardy
"A man's silence is wonderful to listen to."
by Thomas Hardy
"I shall be breakfasted before you are afield. In short, I shall astonish you all."
by Thomas Hardy
"If a way to the better there be, it lies in taking a full look at the worst."
by Thomas Hardy
"Loving is misery for women always. I shall never forgive God for making me a woman and dearly am I beginning to pay for the honour of owning a pretty face."
by Thomas Hardy
"The fundamental error of their matrimonial union that of having based a permanent contract on a temporary feeling."
by Thomas Hardy
"The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes"
by Thomas Hardy
"Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened."
by Thomas Hardy
"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."
by Thomas Hardy
"Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle."
by Thomas Hardy
"Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them."
by Thomas Hardy
"The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him."
by Thomas Hardy
"Once victim, always victim -- that's the law!"
by Thomas Hardy
"It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs."
by Thomas Hardy
"Dialect words are those terrible marks of the beast to the truly genteel."
by Thomas Hardy
"If way to the better there be, it exacts a full look at the worst."
by Thomas Hardy
"Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honor as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity."
by Thomas Hardy
"There was no exaggeration in Marian's definition of Flintcomb-Ash farm as a starve-acre place. The single fat thing on the soil was Marian herself; and she was an importation. Of the three classes of village, the village cared for by its lord, the village cared for by itself, and the village uncared for either by itself or by its lord (in other words, the village of a resident squires's tenantry, the village of free or copy-holders, and the absentee-owner's village, farmed with the land) this place, Flintcomb-Ash, was the third. But Tess set to work. Patience, that blending of moral courage with physical timidity, was now no longer a minor feature in Mrs Angel Clare; and it sustained her."
by Thomas Hardy
"Pessimism is, in brief, playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you can never be disappointed. Having reckoned what to do in the worst possible circumstances, when better arise, as they may, life becomes child's play."
by Thomas Hardy
"Don't you go believing in sayings, Picotee: they are all made by men, for their own advantages. Women who use public proverbs as a guide through events are those who have not ingenuity enough to make private ones as each event occurs."
by Thomas Hardy
"Aspect are within us, and who seems most kingly is king."
by Thomas Hardy
"Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change."
by Thomas Hardy
"Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn, We should have sat us down to wet Right many a nipperkin! But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place. I shot him dead because-- Because he was my foe, Just so: my foe of course he was; That's clear enough; although He thought he"
by Thomas Hardy
"Let me enjoy the earth no less because the all-enacting light that fashioned forth its loveliness had other aims than my delight."
by Thomas Hardy
"'Justice' was done, and the President of the Immortals, in Æschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess. And the d'Urberville knights and ..."
by Thomas Hardy
"'I can make you happy,' said he to the back of her head, across the bush. 'You shall have a piano in a year or two—farmers' wives are gettin..."
by Thomas Hardy
"'Come hither, Son,' I heard Death say; 'I did not will a grave Should end thy pilgrimage today, But I, too, am a slave!'"
by Thomas Hardy
"And so, standing before the aforesaid officiator, the two swore that at every other time of their lives till death took them, they would assur..."
by Thomas Hardy
"Don't you go believing in sayings, Picotee: they are all made by men, for their own advantages. Women who use public proverbs as a guide throu..."
by Thomas Hardy
"It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because m..."
by Thomas Hardy
"It may have been observed that there is no regular path for getting out of love as there is for getting in. Some people look upon marriage as ..."
by Thomas Hardy
"The Young Man's Best Companion, The Farrier's Sure Guide, The Veterinary Surgeon, Paradise Lost, The Pilgrim's Progress, Robinson Crusoe, Ash'..."
by Thomas Hardy


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