Thomas Hardy Quotes

Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.

To dwellers in a wood, almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature.

That aspects are within us; and who seems Most kingly is the King.

The resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.

O, you have torn my life all to pieces... made me be what I prayed you in pity not to make me be again!

A woman would rather visit her own grave than the place where she has been young and beautiful after she is aged and ugly.

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!

Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons.

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.

Why is it that a woman can see from a distance what a man cannot see close?

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.

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.

The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes.

I shall do one thing in this life-one thing certain-this is, love you, and long of you, and keep wanting you till I die.

The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him.

And yet to every bad there is a worse.

And at home by the fire, whenever you look up there I shall be— and whenever I look up, there will be you. -Gabriel Oak

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.

Happiness is but a mere episode in the general drama of pain.

A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all.

Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness.

We colour and mould according to the wants within us whatever our eyes bring in.

Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.

A blaze of love and extinction, was better than a lantern glimmer of the same which should last long years.

Women are so strange in their influence that they tempt you to misplaced kindness.

It was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity

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.

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.

Tis because we be on a blighted star, and not a sound one, isn't it Tess?

Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

Teach me to live, that I may dread The grave as little as my bed. Teach me to die.

There's a friendly tie of some sort between music and eating.

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!

If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone.

Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honor as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity.

If we be doomed to marry, we marry; if we be doomed to remain single we do.

Some folk want their luck buttered.

It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.

Beauty lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized.

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.

Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.

So each had a private little sun for her soul to bask in; some dream, some affection, some hobby, or at least some remote and distant hope.

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.

Is a woman a thinking unit at all, or a fraction always wanting its integer?

I am the family face; flesh perishes, I live on.

Women are attracted to silent men. They believe they are listening.

Don't think of what's past!" said she. "I am not going to think outside of now. Why should we! Who knows what tomorrow has in store?

My wicked heart will ramble on in spite of myself. (Arabella)

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.

Measurement of life should be proportioned rather to the intensity of the experience than to its actual length.