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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

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

Believe Deal Goodness Reality Strange
My weakness has always been to prefer the large intention of an unskilful artist to the trivial intention of an accomplished one: in other words, I am more interested in the high ideas of a feeble executant than in the high execution of a feeble thinker.
THOMAS HARDY

Artist Execution Ideas Interest Myself Preference Skill Thinking Weakness Word
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.
THOMAS HARDY

Adventure Dreams Emotion Happiness Universe
Some women’s love of being loved is insatiable; and so, often, is their love of loving; and in the last case they may find that they can’t give it continuously to the chamber-officer appointed by the bishop’s license to receive it.
THOMAS HARDY

Generosity License Love Woman
It is rarely that the pleasures of the imagination will compensate for the pain of sleeplessness.
THOMAS HARDY

Happiness Imagination Pain Sleep
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

Acceptance Appearance Husband Man Marriage Ordinary Possession Woman
Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
THOMAS HARDY

Afraid Heart Trouble
She was at that modulating point between indifference and love, at the stage called having a fancy for. It occurs once in the history of the most gigantic passions, and it is a period when they are in the hands of the weakest will.
THOMAS HARDY

Difference Fantasy Hands History Love Passion Weakness
People go on marrying because they can’t resist natural forces, although many of them may know perfectly well that they are possibly buying a month’s pleasure with a life’s discomfort.
THOMAS HARDY

Comfortable Force Happiness Marriage Natural People Resistance
Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.
THOMAS HARDY

Constitution Herself Practice Principle Success
Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons.
THOMAS HARDY

Moral Reason Wrong
If we be doomed to marry, we marry; if we be doomed to remain single we do.
THOMAS HARDY

Couple Love Marriage Relationship
If an offense come out of the truth, better is it that the offense come than that the truth be concealed.
THOMAS HARDY

Better Hide Offense Truth
But nothing is more insidious than the evolution of wishes from mere fancies, and of wants from mere wishes.
THOMAS HARDY

Evolution Fantasy
To dwellers in a wood, almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature.
THOMAS HARDY

Feature Tree Voice Wood
Women are so strange in their influence that they tempt you to misplaced kindness.
THOMAS HARDY

Influence Kindness Strange Temptation Woman

The business of the poet and the novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things.

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The business of the poet and the novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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