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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

All romances end at marriage.
THOMAS HARDY

End Marriage One Liner Romance
It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.
THOMAS HARDY

Difficult Expression Feeling Language Man Woman
My eyes were dazed by you for a little, and that was all.
THOMAS HARDY

Eyes Love Myself Relationship Yourself
Women are so strange in their influence that they tempt you to misplaced kindness.
THOMAS HARDY

Influence Kindness Strange Temptation Woman
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
To dwellers in a wood, almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature.
THOMAS HARDY

Feature Tree Voice Wood
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
A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all.
THOMAS HARDY

Love Lover
There’s a friendly tie of some sort between music and eating.
THOMAS HARDY

Eat Friendship Music
Indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not.
THOMAS HARDY

Fate Man Villain
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.
THOMAS HARDY

Distance Dreams Hope Privacy Soul Sun
To be loved to madness–such was her great desire. Love was to her the one cordial which could drive away the eating loneliness of her days. And she seemed to long for the abstraction called passionate love more than for any particular lover.
THOMAS HARDY

Desire Greatness Love Madness Passionate
Their position was perhaps the happiest of all positions in the social scale, being above the line at which neediness ends, and below the line at which the convenances begin to cramp natural feeling, and the stress of threadbare modishness makes too little of enough.
THOMAS HARDY

Enough Feeling Happiness Natural Position Social
The perfect woman, you see [is] a working-woman; not an idler; not a fine lady; but one who [uses] her hands and her head and her heart for the good of others.
THOMAS HARDY

Hands Heart Herself Perfection Woman Work
Women are attracted to silent men. They believe they are listening.
THOMAS HARDY

Attraction Listening Man Silence Woman
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 HARDY

Better Children Disappoint Game Life Lose Play Possible Worst
Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons.
THOMAS HARDY

Moral Reason Wrong
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

Drama Experience Happiness Impression Leadership Learning Life Live Placement Subject
O, you have torn my life all to pieces… made me be what I prayed you in pity not to make me be again!
THOMAS HARDY

Life Myself Pieces Prayer
Let me enjoy the earth no less because the all-enacting light that fashioned forth its loveliness had other aims than my delight.
THOMAS HARDY

Delight Earth Enjoyment Fashion Happiness Light Myself
But his dreams were as gigantic as his surroundings were small.
THOMAS HARDY

Dreams Small Surround
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

Business Novel Poet Sorry
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
I wish I had never been born–there or anywhere else.
THOMAS HARDY

Born Fantasy

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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