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 HARDYHappiness is but a mere episode in the general drama of pain.
More Thomas Hardy Quotes
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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 -
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 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 -
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 -
Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons.
THOMAS HARDY -
It was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity.
THOMAS HARDY -
Remember that the best and greatest among mankind are those who do themselves no worldly good. Every successful man is more or less a selfish man. The devoted fail.
THOMAS HARDY -
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 -
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 difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.
THOMAS HARDY -
If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone.
THOMAS HARDY -
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 -
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 -
You, and those like you, take your fill of pleasure on earth by making the life of such as me bitter and black with sorrow; and then it is a fine thing, when you have had enough of that, to think of securing your pleasure in heaven by becoming converted!
THOMAS HARDY -
There’s a friendly tie of some sort between music and eating.
THOMAS HARDY -
If an offense come out of the truth, better is it that the offense come than that the truth be concealed.
THOMAS HARDY -
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 -
The first cause worked automatically like a somnambulist, and not reflectively like a sage.
THOMAS HARDY -
Women accept their destiny more readily than men.
THOMAS HARDY -
The value of old age depends upon the person who reaches it. To some men of early performance it is useless. To others, who are late to develop, it just enables them to finish the job.
THOMAS HARDY -
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 -
We ought to have lived in mental communion, and no more.
THOMAS HARDY -
You concede nothing to me and I have to concede everything to you.
THOMAS HARDY -
But his dreams were as gigantic as his surroundings were small.
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 -
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