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All romances end at marriage.

Thomas Hardy

When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often then not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.
THOMAS HARDY

Beginning Lover Secret Woman
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

Cruelty Different Fate Hope Indulgence Love Obstacle Sad
The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him.
THOMAS HARDY

Difference Heaven Man Object Religion
Silence has sometimes a remarkable power of showing itself as the disembodied soul of feeling wandering without its carcase, and it is then more impressive than speech.
THOMAS HARDY

Feeling Impression Power Remark Silence Soul Speech
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
I may do some good before I am dead–be a sort of success as a frightful example of what not to do; and so illustrate a moral story.
THOMAS HARDY

Death Goodness Illustration Moral Story Success
That one true heart was left behind! What feeling do we ever find, to equal among human kind, a dog’s fidelity!
THOMAS HARDY

Cheating Dog Equality Feeling Heart Human Kind True
Women are so strange in their influence that they tempt you to misplaced kindness.
THOMAS HARDY

Influence Kindness Strange Temptation Woman
And yet to every bad there is a worse.
THOMAS HARDY

Bad One Liner Worst
We colour and mould according to the wants within us whatever our eyes bring in.
THOMAS HARDY

Color Creation Eyes Ourselves
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
But nothing is more insidious than the evolution of wishes from mere fancies, and of wants from mere wishes.
THOMAS HARDY

Evolution Fantasy
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
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
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
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
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 accept their destiny more readily than men.
THOMAS HARDY

Acceptance Destiny Man Woman
My eyes were dazed by you for a little, and that was all.
THOMAS HARDY

Eyes Love Myself Relationship Yourself
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
Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.
THOMAS HARDY

Constitution Herself Practice Principle Success
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.
THOMAS HARDY

Believe Capability Childhood Love Myself Nature Possession Protection
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
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
We ought to have lived in mental communion, and no more.
THOMAS HARDY

Live Mental Togetherness
The first cause worked automatically like a somnambulist, and not reflectively like a sage.
THOMAS HARDY

Reflection Work
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

Herself Strength Strong Weakness Woman Worst

All romances end at marriage.

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All romances end at marriage.

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