Thomas Hardy Quotes

Phases of her childhood lurked in her aspect still. As she walked along to-day, for all her bouncing handsome womanliness, you could sometimes see her twelfth year in her cheeks, or her ninth sparkling from her eyes; and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her mouth now and then. ~ Tess of the D'Urbervilles by 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. ~ Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy "Don't think of what's past!" said she. "I am not going to think outside of now. Why should we! Who knows what to-morrow has in store?" ~ Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy "A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. Circumspection and devotion are a contradiction in terms." ~ The Hand of Ethelberta by Thomas Hardy "Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle." ~ The Hand of Ethelberta by Thomas Hardy Eustacia Vye was the raw material of a divinity. On Olympus she would have done well with a little preparation. She had the passions and instincts which make a model goddess, that is, those which make not quite a model woman. ~ Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy A well proportioned mind is one which shows no particular bias; one of which we may safely say that it will never cause its owner to be confined as a madman, tortured as a heretic, or crucified as a blasphemer. Also, on the other hand, that it will never cause him to be applauded as a prophet, revered as a priest, or exalted as a king. Its usual blessings are happiness and mediocrity. ~ Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank brooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen. Every night its Titanic form seemed to await something; but it had waited thus, unmoved, during so many centuries, through the crises of so many things, that it could only be imagined to await one last crisis—the final overthrow. ~ Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy And in being forced to class herself among the fortunate she did not cease to wonder at the persistence of the unforeseen, when the one to whom such unbroken tranquility had been accorded in the adult stage was she whose youth had seemed to teach that happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain. ~ The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy "Some folk want their luck buttered." ~ The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy