Thomas Hardy Quotes

This is the weather the shepherd shuns, And so do I.

Hate him she did not quite; but he was dust and ashes to her...

Bathsheba loved Troy in the way that only self-reliant women love when they abandon their self-reliance. When a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman who has never any strength to throw away. One source of her inadequacy is the novelty of the occasion. She has never had practice in making the best of such a condition. Weakness is doubly weak by being new.

The vast difference between starting a train of events, and directing into a particular groove a series already started, is rarely apparent to the person confounded by the issue.

the sun shone into her mouth as into a tulip, and lent it a similar scarlet fire.

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

A local cult, called Christianity.

Teach me to live, that I may dread
The grave as little as my bed.
Teach me to die…

To find beauty in ugliness is the province of the poet.

The village was shutting its eyes. Candles and lamps were being put out everywhere: she could inwardly behold the extinguisher and the extended hand.

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

They did not vary their partners if their inclination were to stick to previous ones.Changing partners simply meant that a satisfactory choice had not as yet been arrived at by one or other of the pair, and by this time every couple had been suitably matched. It was then that the ecstasy and the dream began, in which emotion was the matter of the universe, and matter but an adventitious intrusion likely to hinder you from spinning where you wanted to spin.

People say I must be cold–natured — sexless — on account of it. But I won’t have it! Some of the most passionately erotic poets have been the most self–contained in their daily lives.

Tell him everything; it is best. He will forgive you.

To be conscious that the end of a dream is approaching, and yet has not absolutely come, is one of the most wearisome as well as the most curious stages along the course between the beginning of a passion and its end.