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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

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
And yet to every bad there is a worse.
THOMAS HARDY

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

Believe Deal Goodness Reality Strange
That man’s silence is wonderful to listen to.
THOMAS HARDY

Listening Man Silence Wonderful
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
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
If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst.
THOMAS HARDY

Beginning Better Path Worst
That it would always be summer and autumn, and you always courting me, and always thinking as much of me as you have done through the past summertime!
THOMAS HARDY

Autumn Past Summer Thinking Time
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
She moved about in a mental cloud of many-coloured idealities, which eclipsed all sinister contingencies by its brightness.
THOMAS HARDY

Bright Ideal Mental Sin
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
Why is it that a woman can see from a distance what a man cannot see close?
THOMAS HARDY

Distance Man See Woman
The offhand decision of some commonplace mind high in office at a critical moment influences the course of events for a hundred years.
THOMAS HARDY

Age Critical Decision Hands Mindset Moments Time
Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.
THOMAS HARDY

Change Exception Surprise Time
If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone.
THOMAS HARDY

Alone Himself Move Talk World
There are accents in the eye which are not on the tongue, and more tales come from pale lips than can enter an ear. It is both the grandeur and the pain of the remoter moods that they avoid the pathway of sound.
THOMAS HARDY

Avoid Eyes Pain Path Sound Story

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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