Pessimism is 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.
THOMAS HARDYPessimism is 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.
More Thomas Hardy Quotes
-
-
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 -
And at home by the fire, whenever you look up there I shall be— and whenever I look up, there will be you.
THOMAS HARDY -
I wish I had never been born–there or anywhere else.
THOMAS HARDY -
If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone.
THOMAS HARDY -
The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes.
THOMAS HARDY -
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 -
The first cause worked automatically like a somnambulist, and not reflectively like a sage.
THOMAS HARDY -
Many have learned that the magnitude of lives is not as to their external displacements, but as to their subjective experiences. The impressionable peasant leads a larger, fuller, more dramatic life than the pachydermatous king.
THOMAS HARDY -
The resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.
THOMAS HARDY -
Is a woman a thinking unit at all, or a fraction always wanting its integer?
THOMAS HARDY -
That one true heart was left behind! What feeling do we ever find, to equal among human kind, a dog’s fidelity!
THOMAS HARDY -
That man’s silence is wonderful to listen to.
THOMAS HARDY -
I shall do one thing in this life-one thing certain-this is, love you, and long of you, and keep wanting you till I die.
THOMAS HARDY -
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 -
It was terribly beautiful to Tess today, for since her eyes last fell upon it she had learnt that the serpent hisses where the sweet birds sing.
THOMAS HARDY -
It is rarely that the pleasures of the imagination will compensate for the pain of sleeplessness.
THOMAS HARDY -
Well, these sad and hopeless obstacles are welcome in one sense, for they enable us to look with indifference upon the cruel satires that Fate loves to indulge in.
THOMAS HARDY -
Some folk want their luck buttered.
THOMAS HARDY -
If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst.
THOMAS HARDY -
Women accept their destiny more readily than men.
THOMAS HARDY -
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 -
Women are attracted to silent men. They believe they are listening.
THOMAS HARDY -
She moved about in a mental cloud of many-coloured idealities, which eclipsed all sinister contingencies by its brightness.
THOMAS HARDY -
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 -
A strong woman who recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.
THOMAS HARDY -
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!
THOMAS HARDY