Thomas Hardy Quotes

Ladies know what to guard against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks…

At first I did not love you, Jude; that I own. When I first knew you I merely wanted you to love me. I did not exactly flirt with you; but that inborn craving which undermines some women's morals almost more than unbridled passion — the craving to attract and captivate, regardless of the injury it may do the man — was in me; and when I found I had caught you, I was frightened. And then — I don't know how it was — I couldn't bear to let you go — possibly to Arabella again — and so I got to love you, Jude. But you see, however fondly it ended, it began in the selfish and cruel wish to make your heart ache for me without letting mine ache for you.

If an offense come out of the truth, better is it that the offense come than that the truth be concealed.

...our impulses are too strong for our judgement sometimes

Sometimes I shrink from your knowing what I have felt for you, and sometimes I am distressed that all of it you will never know.

Well, what I mean is that I shouldn't mind being a bride at a wedding, if I could be one without having a husband.

She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, feared at tea-parties, hated in shops, and loved at crises.

A man's silence is wonderful to listen to.

You have never loved me as I love you — never — never! Yours is not a passionate heart — your heart does not burn in a flame! You are, upon the whole, a sort of fay, or sprite — not a woman!

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.

This hobble of being alive is rather serious, don’t you think so?

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.

So each had a private little sun for her soul to bask in; some dream, some affection, some hobby, or at least some remote and distant hope....

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.

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