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Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them.

Thomas Hardy

It was still early, and the sun’s lower limb was just free of the hill, his rays, ungenial and peering, addressed the eye rather than the touch as yet.
THOMAS HARDY

Early Eyes Freedom Touch
The sky was clear – remarkably clear – and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse.
THOMAS HARDY

Body Remark Sky Stars Time
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
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
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
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
Happiness is but a mere episode in the general drama of pain.
THOMAS HARDY

Drama Episode Happiness Pain
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
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
Women accept their destiny more readily than men.
THOMAS HARDY

Acceptance Destiny Man Woman
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

Adventure Dreams Emotion Happiness Universe
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
Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.
THOMAS HARDY

Constitution Herself Practice Principle Success
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
But his dreams were as gigantic as his surroundings were small.
THOMAS HARDY

Dreams Small Surround
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

Black Earth Enough Happiness Life Security Sorrow Yourself
And yet to every bad there is a worse.
THOMAS HARDY

Bad One Liner Worst
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
Why is it that a woman can see from a distance what a man cannot see close?
THOMAS HARDY

Distance Man See Woman
If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst.
THOMAS HARDY

Beginning Better Path Worst
It may have been observed that there is no regular path for getting out of love as there is for getting in. Some people look upon marriage as a short cut that way, but it has been known to fail.
THOMAS HARDY

Failure Marriage Observation Path People Regular
Our impulses are too strong for our judgement sometimes.
THOMAS HARDY

Judgement Ourselves Strong
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
Beauty lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized.
THOMAS HARDY

Beautiful Symbol
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

Fire God Home Love Myself Yourself

Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them.

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Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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