Thomas Hardy, Jude The Obscure Quotes

You have never loved me as I love you--never--never! Yours is not a passionate heart--your heart does not burn in a flame! You are, upon the whole, a sort of fay, or sprite-- not a woman!

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.

You don't talk quite like a girl who has had no advantages.

You concede nothing to me and I have to concede everything to you.

Always wanting another man than your own.

being a harp which the least wind of emotion from another’s heart could make to vibrate as readily as a radical stir in her own.

I hate to be what is called a clever girl—there are too many of that sort now!

Some of the most passionately erotic poets have been the most self-contained in their daily lives.

Love has its own dark morality when rivalry enters in.

All laughing comes from misapprehension. Rightly looked at there is no laughable thing under the sun.

If he could only prevent himself growing up! He did not want to be a man.

I have sometimes thought--that under the affectation of independent views you are as enslaved to the social code as any woman I know!

Like enthusiasts in general, he made no inquiries into details of procedure.

An average woman is in this superior to an average man—that she never instigates, only responds.

The purpose of a chronicler of moods and deeds does not require him to express his personal views upon the grave controversy above given.

I think that whenever children be born that are not wanted they should be killed directly, before their souls come to 'em, and not allowed to grow big and walk about!

Then if children make so much trouble, why do people have 'em?

And then he again uneasily saw, as he had latterly seen with more and more frequency, the scorn of Nature for man’s finer emotions, and her lack of interest in his aspirations.