Top quotes by Thomas Hardy

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. Votes: 29

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. Votes: 7

Cruelty is the law pervading all nature and society; and we can't get out of it if we would. Votes: 7

You can do anything with bayonets except sit on them. Votes: 6

A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible. Votes: 5

The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him. Votes: 4

I am the family face; flesh perishes, I live on. Votes: 4

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. Votes: 4

Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art. Votes: 3

My opinion is that a poet should express the emotion of all the ages and the thought of his own. Votes: 3

I am the family face; flesh perishes, I live on, projecting trait and trace through time to times anon, and leaping from place to place over oblivion. Votes: 3

Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive; why so often the coarse appropriates the finer thus, the wrong man the woman, the wrong women the man, many years of analytical philosophy have failed to explain to our sense of order Votes: 3

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. Votes: 2

If we be doomed to marry, we marry; if we be doomed to remain single we do. Votes: 1

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 Votes: 1

the social mould civilization fits us into have no more relation to our actual shapes than the conventional shapes of the constellations have to the real star-patterns. I am called Mrs. Richard Phillotson, living a calm wedded life with my counterpart of that name. But I am not really Mrs. Richard Phillotson, but a woman tossed about, all alone, with aberrant passions, and unaccountable antipathies Votes: 1

It is the effect of marriage to engender in several directions some of the reserve it annihilates in one. Votes: 1

Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness. Marriage transforms a distraction into a support, the power of which should be, and happily often is, in direct proportion to the degree of imbecility it supplants. Votes: 1

When you've made up your mind to marry, take the first respectable body that comes to hand - she's as good as any other; they be all alike in groundwork: 'tis only in the flourishes there's a difference. Votes: 1

Their lives were ruined, he thought; ruined by the fundamental error of their matrimonial union: that of having based a permanent contract on a temporary feeling which had no necessary connection with affinities that alone render a lifelong comradeship tolerable. Votes: 1

She showed that oblique-mannered softness which is perhaps more frequent in women of darker complexion and more lymphatic temperament than Mrs. Charmond's was; women who lingeringly smile their meanings to men rather than speak to them, who inveigle rather than prompt, and take advantage of currents rather than steer." Votes: 1

Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down you'd treat if met where any bar is, or help to half-a-crown. Votes: 0

Happiness is but a mere episode in the general drama of pain. Votes: 0

They spoke very little of their mutual feeling; pretty phrases and warm expressions being probably unnecessary between such tried friends. Votes: 0

Do you know that I have undergone three quarters of this labour entirely for the sake of the fourth quarter? Votes: 0

War makes good history but peace is poor reading. Votes: 0

War makes rattling good history. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Is a woman a thinking unit at all, or a fraction always wanting its integer? Votes: 0

Aspect are within us, and who seems most kingly is king. Votes: 0

Let me enjoy the earth no less because the all-enacting light that fashioned forth its loveliness had other aims than my delight. Votes: 0

Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them. Votes: 0

Their position was perhaps the happiest of all positions in the social scale, being above the line at which neediness ends, and below the line at which the convenances begin to cramp natural feeling, and the stress of threadbare modishness makes too little of enough. Votes: 0

That one true heart was left behind! What feeling do we ever find, to equal among human kind , a dog's fidelity! Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Clare had studied the curves of those lips so many times that he could reproduce them mentally with ease: and now, as they again confronted him, clothed with colour and life, they sent an aura over his flesh, a breeze through his nerves, which wellnigh produced a qualm; and actually produced, by some mysterious physiological process, a prosaic sneeze. Votes: 0

Fear is the mother of foresight Votes: 0

There is a condition worse than blindness, and that is, seeing something that isn't there Votes: 0

She might have seen that what had bowed her head so profoundly - the thought of the world's concern at her situation - was founded on illusion. She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself. To all humankind besides, Tess was only a passing thought. Votes: 0

She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself. To all humankind besides Tess was only a passing thought. Even to friends she was no more than a frequently passing thought. Votes: 0

Most of the misery had been generated by her conventional aspect, and not by her innate sensations. Votes: 0

To see persons looking with children's eyes at any ordinary scenery, is a proof that they possess the charming faculty of drawing new sensations from an old experience... Votes: 0

To find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable and expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability, induction -- every kind of evidence in the logician's list -- have united to persuade consciousness that it is quite in isolation. Votes: 0

The Fawleys were not made for wedlock: it never seemed to sit well upon us. There's sommat in our blood that won't take kindly to the notion of being bound to do what we do readily enough if not bound. ... Votes: 0

Nature does not often say 'See?' to her poor creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply 'Here!' to a body's cry of 'Where?' till the hide-and-seek has become an irksome, outworn game. Votes: 0

Let truth be told - women do as a rule live through such humiliations, and regain their spirits, and again look about them with an interested eye. While there's life there's hope is a connviction not so entirely unknown to the betrayed as some amiable theorists would have us believe. Votes: 0

A story must be exceptional enough to justify its telling. We storytellers are all ancient mariners, and none of us is justified in stopping wedding guests, unless he has something more unusual to relate than the ordinary experiences of every average man and woman. Votes: 0

Finding this, she was much perplexed as to Henchard's motives in opening the matter at all; for in such cases we attribute to an enemy a power of consistent action which we never find in ourselves or or in our friends... Votes: 0

I am only a peasant by position, not by nature! Votes: 0

She had the hard, half-apathetic expression of one who deems anything possible at the hands of time and chance, except perhaps fair play Votes: 0

Tell him everything; it is best. He will forgive you. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

you are absolutely the most ethereal, least sensual woman I ever knew to exist without inhuman sexlessness. Votes: 0

I have sometimes thought--that under the affectation of independent views you are as enslaved to the social code as any woman I know! Votes: 0

Every woman who makes a permanent impression on a man is afterwards recalled to his mind's eye as she appeared in one particular scene, which seems ordained to be her special medium of manifestation throughout all the pages of his memory. Votes: 0

Perhaps you are making a cat's paw of me with Phillotson all this time. Upon my word it almost seems so--to see you sitting up there so prim. Votes: 0

Deeds of endurance, which seem ordinary in philosophy, are rare in conduct. Votes: 0

She had learned the lesson of renunciation and was as familiar with the wreck of each day's wishes as with the diurnal setting of the sun. Votes: 0

She seemed to be occupied with of inner chamber of ideas and to have slight need for visible objects. Votes: 0

He was moderately truthful towards men, but to women lied like a Cretan-a system of ethics above all others calculated to win popularity at the first flush of admission into lively society. Votes: 0

Idiosyncrasy and vicissitude had combined to stamp Sergeant Troy as an exceptional being. Votes: 0

Always wanting another man than your own. Votes: 0

When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often then not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover. Votes: 0

If the story-tellers could ha' got decency and good morals from true stories, who'd have troubled to invent parables? Votes: 0

Did it never strike your mind that what every woman says, some women may feel? Votes: 0

To dwellers in a wood, almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. Votes: 0

This supreme instance of Troy's goodness fell upon Gabriel's ears like the thirteenth stroke of a crazy clock. Votes: 0

She tried to argue, and tell him that he had mixed in his dull brain two matters, theology and morals, which in the primitive days of mankind had been quite distinct. Votes: 0

You don't talk quite like a girl who has had no advantages. Votes: 0

Then if children make so much trouble, why do people have 'em? Votes: 0

We colour and mould according to the wants within us whatever our eyes bring in. Votes: 0

He was to them like the poet of a new school who takes his contemporaries by storm; who is not really new, but is the first to articulate what all his listeners have felt, though but dumbly till then. Votes: 0

So do flux and reflux--the rhythm of change--alternate and persist in everything under the sky. Votes: 0

Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness. Votes: 0

Happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain. Votes: 0

This is the weather the cuckoo likes, And so do I; When showers betumble the chestnut spikes, And nestlings fly Votes: 0

There's a friendly tie of some sort between music and eating. Votes: 0

That innate love of melody, which she had inherited from her ballad-singing mother, gave the simplest music a power which could well-nigh drag her heart out of her bosom at times. Votes: 0

Done because we are too many. Votes: 0

It was part of his nature to extenuate nothing and live on as one of his own worst accusers. Votes: 0

Fundamental belief consoled him for superficial irony. Votes: 0

But you are too lovely even to care to be kind as others are. Votes: 0

He's the man we were in search of, that's true, and yet he's not the man we were in search of. For the man we were in search of was not the man we wanted. Votes: 0

The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes. Votes: 0

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... Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

It is rarely that the pleasures of the imagination will compensate for the pain of sleeplessness, Votes: 0

Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?" "Yes." "All like ours?" "I don't know, but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound - a few blighted." "Which do we live on - a splendid one or a blighted one?" "A blighted one. Votes: 0

It was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity Votes: 0

Bless thy simplicity, Tess Votes: 0

Let truth be told - women do as a rule live through such humiliations, and regain their spirits, and again look about them with an interested eye. While there's life there's hope is a connviction not so entirely unknown to the "betrayed" as some amiable theorists would have us believe. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

There was now a distinct manifestation of morning in the air, and presently the bleared white visage of a sunless winter day emerged like a dead-born child. Votes: 0

Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Votes: 0

O, you have torn my life all to pieces... made me be what I prayed you in pity not to make me be again! Votes: 0

Patience, that blending of moral courage with physical timidity. Votes: 0

There is a condition worse than blindness, and that is, seeing something that isn't there. Votes: 0

Some folk want their luck buttered. Votes: 0

It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs. Votes: 0

The offhand decision of some commonplace mind high in office at a critical moment influences the course of events for a hundred years. Votes: 0

A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. Votes: 0

If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone. Votes: 0

Fear is the mother of foresight. Votes: 0

That man's silence is wonderful to listen to. Votes: 0

...he seemed to approach the grave as an hyperbolic curve approaches a line, less directly as he got nearer, till it was doubtful if he would ever reach it at all. Votes: 0

...Nameless, unknown to me as you were, I couldn't forget your voice!' 'For how long?' 'O - ever so long. Days and days.' 'Days and days! Only days and days? O, the heart of a man! Days and days!' 'But, my dear madam, I had not known you more than a day or two. It was not a full-blown love - it was the merest bud - red, fresh, vivid, but small. It was a colossal passion in embryo. It never returned. Votes: 0

...our impulses are too strong for our judgement sometimes Votes: 0

...she moved about in a mental cloud of many-coloured idealities, which eclipsed all sinister contingencies by its brightness. Votes: 0

...the figure near at hand suffers on such occasions, because it shows up its sorriness without shade; while vague figures afar off are honored, in that their distance makes artistic virtues of their stains. In considering what Tess was not, he overlooked what she was, and forgot that the defective can be more than the entire. Votes: 0

...the social mould civilization fits us into have no more relation to our actual shapes than the conventional shapes of the constellations have to the real star-patterns. I am called Mrs. Richard Phillotson, living a calm wedded life with my counterpart of that name. But I am not really Mrs. Richard Phillotson, but a woman tossed about, all alone, with aberrant passions, and unaccountable antipathies... Votes: 0

A blaze of love and extinction, was better than a lantern glimmer of the same which should last long years. Votes: 0

A novel is an impression, not an argument; and there the matter must rest. Votes: 0

All romances end at marriage. Votes: 0

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 Votes: 0

And yet to every bad there is a worse. Votes: 0

Backlock, a poet blind from his birth, could describe visual objects with accuracy; Professor Sanderson, who was also blind, gave excellent lectures on color, and taught others the theory of ideas which they had and he had not. In the social sphere these gifted ones are mostly women; they can watch a world which they never saw, and estimate forces of which they have only heard. We call it intuition. Votes: 0

Bathsheba loved Troy in the way that only self-reliant women love when they abandon their self-reliance. When a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman who has never any strength to throw away. One source of her inadequacy is the novelty of the occasion. She has never had practice in making the best of such a condition. Weakness is doubly weak by being new. Votes: 0

Beauty lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized. Votes: 0

Because what's the use of learning that I am one of a long row only - finding out that there is set down in some old book somebody just like me, and to know that I shall only act her part; making me sad, that's all. The best is not to remember your nature and your past doings have been just like thousands' and thousands', and that your coming life and doings'll be like thousands' and thousands'. Votes: 0

Black chaos comes, and the fettered gods of the earth say, Let there be light. Votes: 0

But his dreams were as gigantic as his surroundings were small. Votes: 0

But no one came. Because no one ever does. Votes: 0

But nothing is more insidious than the evolution of wishes from mere fancies, and of wants from mere wishes. Votes: 0

By experience", says Roger Ascham, "we find out a short way by a long wandering." Not seldom that long wandering unfits us for further travel, and of what use is our experience to us then? Votes: 0

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. "Now they are all on their knees," An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearth-side ease. We pictured the meek mild creatures where They dwelt in their strawy pen, Nor did it occur to one of us there To doubt they were kneeling then. So fair a fancy few would weave In these years! yet, I feel If someone said on Christmas Eve, "Come; see the oxen kneel, In the lonely barton by yonder coomb Our childhood used to know," I should go with him in the gloom, Hoping it might be so. Votes: 0

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? Votes: 0

Everybody must be managed. Queens must be managed. Kings must be managed, for men want managing almost as much as women, and that's saying a good deal. Votes: 0

George's son had done his work so thoroughly that he was considered too good a workman to live, and was, in fact, taken and tragically shot at twelve o'clock that same dayanother instance of the untoward fate which so often attends dogs and other philosophers who follow out a train of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and attempt perfectly consistent conduct in a world made up so largely of compromise. Votes: 0

Give the enemy not only a road for flight, but also a means of defending it. Votes: 0

He knelt and bent lower, till her breath warmed his face, and in a moment his cheek was in contact with hers. She was sleeping soundly, and upon her eyelashes there lingered tears... Votes: 0

He Looked and smelt like Autumn's very brother, his face being sunburnt to wheat-colour, his eyes blue as corn-flowers, his sleeves and leggings dyed with fruit-stains, his hands clammy with the sweet juice of apples, his hat sprinkled with pips, and everywhere about him the sweet atmosphere of cider which at its first return each season has such an indescribable fascination for those who have been born and bred among the orchards. Votes: 0

He wished she knew his impressions, but he would as soon as thought of carrying an odour in a net as of attempting to convey the intangibles of his feeling in the coarse meshes of language. So he remained silent. Votes: 0

Her affection for him was now the breath and life of Tess's being; it enveloped her as a photosphere, irradiated her into forgetfulness of her past sorrows, keeping back the gloomy spectres that would persist in their attempts to touch herdoubt, fear, moodiness, care, shame. She knew that they were waiting like wolves just outside the circumscribing light, but she had long spells of power to keep them in hungry subjection there. Votes: 0

He's charmed by her as if she were some fairy!" continued Arabella. "See how he looks round at her, and lets his eyes rest on her. I am inclined to think that she don't care for him quite so much as he does for her. She's not a particular warm-hearted creature to my thinking, though she cares for him pretty middling much-- as much as she's able to; and he could make her heart ache a bit if he liked to try--which he's too simple to do. Votes: 0

How I have tried and tried to be a splendid woman, and how destiny has been against me! ...I do not deserve my lot! ...O, the cruelty of putting me into this ill-conceived world! I was capable of much; but I have been injured and blighted and crushed by things beyond my control! O, how hard it is of Heaven to devise such tortures for me, who have done no harm to heaven at all! Votes: 0

I agree to the conditions, Angel; because you know best what my punishment ought to be; only - only - don't make it more than I can bear! Votes: 0

I forgot the defective can be more than the whole Votes: 0

I have felt lately, more and more, that my present way of living is bad in every respect. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

I want to question my belief, so that what is left after I have questioned it, will be even stronger. Votes: 0

I wish I had never been born--there or anywhere else. Votes: 0

I. At Tea THE kettle descants in a cosy drone, And the young wife looks in her husband's face, And then in her guest's, and shows in her own Her sense that she fills an envied place; And the visiting lady is all abloom, And says there was never so sweet a room. And the happy young housewife does not know That the woman beside her was his first choice, Till the fates ordained it could not be so.... Betraying nothing in look or voice The guest sits smiling and sips her tea, And he throws her a stray glance yearningly. Votes: 0

If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst. Votes: 0

If an offense come out of the truth, better is it that the offense come than that the truth be concealed. Votes: 0

In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving Votes: 0

In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving. Nature does not often say 'See!' to her poor creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply 'Here!' to a body's cry of 'Where?' till the hide-and-seek has become an irksome outworn game. Votes: 0

Indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

It was that period in the vernal quarter when we may suppose the Dryads to be waking for the season. The vegetable world begins to move and swell and the saps to rise, till in the completest silence of lone gardens and trackless plantations, where everything seems helpless and still after the bond and slavery of frost, there are bustlings, strainings, united thrusts, and pulls-all-together, in comparison with which the powerful tugs of cranes and pulleys in a noisy city are but pigmy efforts. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Ladies know what to guard against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricksâ¦ Votes: 0

Many of her thoughts were perfect syllogisms; unluckily they always remained thoughts. Only a few were irrational assumptions; but, unfortunately, they were the ones which most frequently grew into deeds Votes: 0

Meanwhile, the trees were just as green as before; the birds sang and the sun shone as clearly now as ever. The familiar surroundings had not darkened because of her grief, nor sickened because of her pain. She might have seen that what had bowed her head so profoundly -the thought of the world's concern at her situation- was found on an illusion. She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself. Votes: 0

Measurement of life should be proportioned rather to the intensity of the experience than to its actual length. Votes: 0

Men thin away to insignificance and oblivion quite as often by not making the most of good spirits when they have them as by lacking good spirits when they are indispensable. Votes: 0

My eyes were dazed by you for a little, and that was all. Votes: 0

My weakness has always been to prefer the large intention of an unskilful artist to the trivial intention of an accomplished one: in other words, I am more interested in the high ideas of a feeble executant than in the high execution of a feeble thinker. Votes: 0

My wicked heart will ramble on in spite of myself. (Arabella) Votes: 0

Never in her life â she could swear it from the bottom of her soul â had she ever intended to do wrong; yet these hard judgments had come. Whatever her sins, they were not sins of intention, but of inadvertence, and why should she have been punished so persistently? Votes: 0

Nobody had beheld the gravitation of the two into one Votes: 0

Of love it may be said, the less earthly the less demonstrative. In its absolutely indestructible form it reaches a profundity in which all exhibition of itself is painful. Votes: 0

Once let a maiden admit the possibility of her being stricken with love for some one at a certain hour and place, and the thing is as good as done. Votes: 0

Pessimism is playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you can never be disappointed. Having reckoned what to do in the worst possible circumstances, when better arise, as they may, life becomes child's play. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

She was but a transient impression, half forgotten. Votes: 0

She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, hated at tea parties, feared in shops, and loved at crises. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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.... Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

Somebody might have come along that way who would have asked him his trouble, and might have cheered him by saying that his notions were further advanced than those of his grammarian. But nobody did come, because nobody does; and under the crushing recognition of his gigantic error Jude continued to wish himself out of the world. Votes: 0

Sometimes a woman's love of being loved gets the better of her conscience, and though she is agonized at the thought of treating a man cruelly, she encourages him to love her while she doesn't love him at all. Then, when she sees him suffering, her remorse sets in, and she does what she can to repair the wrong. Votes: 0

Sometimes I shrink from your knowing what I have felt for you, and sometimes I am distressed that all of it you will never know. Votes: 0

Teach me to live, that I may dread The grave as little as my bed. Teach me to dieâ¦ Votes: 0

That cold accretion called the world, so terrible in the mass, is so non formidable, even pitiable, in its units. Votes: 0

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! Votes: 0

That mercy towards one set of creatures was cruelty towards another sickened his sense of harmony. As you got older, and felt yourself to be at the center of your time, and not at a point in its circumference, as you had felt when you were little, you were seized with a sort of shuddering, he perceived. All around you there seemed to be something glaring, garish, rattling, and the noises and glares hit upon the little cell called your life, and shook it, and warped it. Votes: 0

The beauty or ugliness of a character lay not only in its achievements, but in its aims and impulses; its true history lay, not among things done, but among things willed. Votes: 0

The beggarly question of parentage--what is it, after all? What does it matter, when you come to think of it, whether a child is yours by blood or not? All the little ones of our time are collectively the children of us adults of the time, and entitled to our general care. That excessive regard of parents for their own children, and their dislike of other people's, is, like class-feeling, patriotism, save-your-own-soul-ism, and other virtues, a mean exclusiveness at bottom. Votes: 0

The business of the poet and the novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things. Votes: 0

The first cause worked automatically like a somnambulist, and not reflectively like a sage. Votes: 0

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing alive enough to have strength to die. (from "Neutral Tones") Votes: 0

The trees have inquisitive eyes, haven't they? -that is, seem as if they had. And the river says,-'Why do ye trouble me with your looks?' And you seem to see numbers of to-morrows just all in a line, the first of them the biggest and clearest, the others getting smaller and smaller as they stand further away; but they all seem very fierce and cruel and as if they said, 'I'm coming! Beware of me! Beware of me! Votes: 0

There are disappointments which wring us, and there are those which inflict a wound whose mark we bear to our graves. Such are so keen that no future gratification of the same desire can ever obliterate them: they become registered as a permanent loss of happiness. Votes: 0

There is always an inertia to be overcome in striking out a new line of conduct â not more in ourselves, it seems, than in circumscribing events, which appear as if leagued together to allow no novelties in the way of amelioration. Votes: 0

This good fellowship - camaraderie - usually occurring through the similarity of pursuits is unfortunately seldom super-added to love between the sexes, because men and women associate, not in their labors but in their pleasures merely. Where, however, happy circumstances permit its development, the compounded feeling proves itself to be the only love which is strong as death - that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, besides which the passion usually called by the name is as evanescent as steam. Votes: 0

This hobble of being alive is rather serious, don't you think so? Votes: 0

Thoroughly convinced of the impossibility of his own suit, a high resolve constrained him not to injure that of another. This is a lover's most stoical virtue, as the lack of it is a lover's most venial sin. Votes: 0

Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

To dance with a man is to concentrate a twelvemonth's regulation fire upon him in the fragment of an hour. To pass to courtship without acquaintance, to pass to marriage without courtship, is a skipping of terms reserved for those alone who tread this royal road. Votes: 0

To have lost is less disturbing than to wonder if we may possibly have won; and Eustacia could now, like other people at such a stage, take a standing-point outside herself, observe herself as a disinterested spectator, and think what a sport for Heaven this woman Eustacia was. Votes: 0

We learn that it is not the rays which bodies absorb, but those which they reject, that give them the colours they are known by; and in the same way people are specialized by their dislikes and antagonisms, whilst their goodwill is looked upon as no attribute at all. Votes: 0

We ought to have lived in mental communion, and no more. Votes: 0

WEATHERS This is the weather the cuckoo likes, And so do I; When showers betumble the chestnut spikes, And nestlings fly; And the little brown nightingale bills his best, And they sit outside at 'The Traveller's Rest,' And maids come forth sprig-muslin drest, And citizens dream of the south and west, And so do I. This is the weather the shepherd shuns, And so do I; When beeches drip in browns and duns, And thresh and ply; And hill-hid tides throb, throe on throe, And meadow rivulets overflow, And drops on gate bars hang in a row, And rooks in families homeward go, And so do I. Votes: 0

Well, what I mean is that I shouldn't mind being a bride at a wedding, if I could be one without having a husband. Votes: 0

What is it, Angel?" she said, starting up. "Have they come for me?" "Yes, dearest," he said. "They have come." "It is as it should be," she murmured. "Angel, I am almost gladyes, glad! This happiness could not have lasted. It was too much. I have had enough; and now I shall not live for you to despise me!" She stood up, shook herself, and went forward, neither of the men having moved. "I am ready," she said quietly. Votes: 0

When yellow lights struggle with blue shades in hairlike lines. Votes: 0

Where we are would be Paradise to me, if you would only make it so. Votes: 0

Why didn't you tell me there was danger? Why didn't you warn me? Ladies know what to guard against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks; but I never had the chance of discovering in that way; and you did not help me! Votes: 0

Why is it that a woman can see from a distance what a man cannot see close? Votes: 0

Women accept their destiny more readily than men. Votes: 0

Women are attracted to silent men. They believe they are listening. Votes: 0

Women are so strange in their influence that they tempt you to misplaced kindness. Votes: 0

You are Joseph the dreamer of dreams, dear Jude. And a tragic Don Quixote. And sometimes you are St. Stephen, who, while they were stoning him, could see Heaven opened. Oh, my poor friend and comrade, you'll suffer yet! Votes: 0

You concede nothing to me and I have to concede everything to you. Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

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! Votes: 0

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. Votes: 0

You ride well, but you don't kiss nicely at all. Votes: 0

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! Votes: 0

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