Thomas Hardy quotes - page 4

Thomas Hardy was an English novelist and poet, renowned for his evocative portrayals of rural life and society’s constraints. His major works, such as "Tess of the d’Urbervilles" and "Far from the Madding Crowd," explore themes of fate, love, and human suffering. He influenced generations of writers and remains celebrated for his powerful literary legacy. Here are 208 of his quotes:

See what deceits love sows in honest minds!

Thomas Hardy

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.

Thomas Hardy

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 her-doubt, 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.

Thomas Hardy

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!

Thomas Hardy

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

Thomas Hardy

A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. Circumspection and devotion are a contradiction in terms.

Thomas Hardy

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

Thomas Hardy

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

Thomas Hardy

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

Thomas Hardy

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.

Thomas Hardy

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

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

Thomas Hardy

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

Thomas Hardy

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.

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.

Thomas Hardy

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

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

Thomas Hardy

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

Thomas Hardy

Bless thy simplicity, Tess.

Thomas Hardy

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

Thomas Hardy

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

Thomas Hardy

And Troy's deformities lay deep down from a woman's vision, whilst his embellishments were upon the very surface thus contrasting with homely Oak, whose defects were patent to the blindest, and whose virtues were as metals in a mine.

Thomas Hardy