Top 500 Thomas Hardy Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 10 of 10

451. “Decisive action is seen by appreciative minds to be frequently objectless, and sometimes fatal; but decision, however suicidal, has more charm for a woman than the most unequivocal Fabian success.”

— Thomas Hardy

452. “Tess had never before known a time in which the thread of her life was so distinctly twisted of two strands, positive pleasure and positive pain.”

— Thomas Hardy

453. “One thing he certainly was – sincere.”

— Thomas Hardy

454. “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.”

— Thomas Hardy

455. “The petulance that relatives show towards each other is in truth directed against that intangible Causality which has shaped the situation no less for the offenders than the offended, but is too elusive to be discerned and cornered by poor humanity in irritated mood.”

— Thomas Hardy

456. “She is lazy and dissatisfied. But that is not all of it. Supposing her to be as good a woman as any you can find, which she certainly is not, why do you wish to connect yourself with anybody at present?”

— Thomas Hardy

457. “A woman who attempts a public career must expect to be treated as public property: what would be an intrusion on a domiciled gentlewoman is a tribute to me.”

— Thomas Hardy

458. “Whilst I would have given worlds to touch your hand, you have let a rake come in without right or ceremony and – kiss you! Heaven’s mercy – kiss you!”

— Thomas Hardy

459. “He can blow the flute very well-that ‘a can,’ said a young married man, who having no individuality worth mentioning was known as ‘Susan Tall’s husband.”

— Thomas Hardy

460. “An average woman is in this superior to an average man – that she never instigates, only responds.”

— Thomas Hardy

461. “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.”

— Thomas Hardy

462. “The difference between love and respect was markedly shown in her conduct. Bathsheba had spoken of her interest in Boldwood with the greatest freedom to Liddy, but she only communed with her own heart concerning Troy.”

— Thomas Hardy

463. “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 farther away; but they all seem very fierce and cruel and as if they said, ‘I’m coming! Beware of me! Beware of me!”

— Thomas Hardy

464. “The roof was a gymnasium for the winds.”

— Thomas Hardy

465. “There are considerations even before my consideration for you; reparations to be made-ties you know nothing of. If you repent of marrying, so do I.”

— Thomas Hardy

466. “Yes,’ he said; ‘and not a dishonourable one. What held me back was just that one thing – a sense of morality that perhaps, madam, you did not give me credit for.’ The latter words were spoken with a mien and tone of pride.”

— Thomas Hardy

467. “Time enough to cry when you know ’tis a crying matter; ’tis bad to meet troubles half-way.”

— Thomas Hardy

468. “With Sue as companion he could have renounced his ambitions with a smile. Without her it was inevitable that the reaction from the long strain to which he had subjected himself should affect him disastrously.”

— Thomas Hardy

469. “It was a fatal omission of Boldwood’s that he had never once told her she was beautiful.”

— Thomas Hardy

470. “When shall the saner softer polities Whereof we dream, have play in each proud land, And patriotism, grown Godlike, scorn to stand Bondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas?”

— Thomas Hardy

471. “Over and above the genuine emotion which she raised in his heart there hung the sense that he was casting a die by impulse which he might not have thrown by judgment.”

— Thomas Hardy

472. “A hot breeze, as if breathed from the parted lips of some dragon about to swallow the globe,...”

— Thomas Hardy

473. “There are occasions when girls like Bathsheba will put up with a great deal of unconventional behavior. When they want to be praised, which is often; when they want to be mastered, which is sometimes; and when they want no nonsense, which is seldom.”

— Thomas Hardy

474. “Yes, ’tis rather a rum course,” said Venn, in the bland tone of one comfortably resigned to sins he could no longer overcome.”

— Thomas Hardy

475. “Wisdom lies in moderating mere impressions.”

— Thomas Hardy

476. “We discern a grand force in the lover which he lacks while a free man, but there is a breadth of vision in the free man which in the lover we vainly seek.”

— Thomas Hardy

477. “Women were different from men in such matters. Was it that they were, instead of more sensitive, as reputed, more callous, and less romantic ; or were they more heroic?”

— Thomas Hardy

478. “Matter is matter, and mental association only a delusion.”

— Thomas Hardy

479. “Their eyes having met, became, as it were, mutually locked together,... a clear penetrating ray of intelligence had shot from each into each, giving birth to... , the conviction, ‘A tie has began to unite us.”

— Thomas Hardy

480. “Of all the ingenious and cruel satires that from the beginning till now have been stuck like knives into womankind, surely there is not one so lacerating to them, and to us who love them, as the trite old fact, that the most wretched of men can, in the twinkling of an eye, find a wife ready to be more wretched still for the sake of his company. Edward hastened to despatch his.”

— Thomas Hardy

481. “Jude waited at all the evening downstairs. At a very late hour the intelligence was bought to him that a child had been prematurely born, and that it, like the others, was a corpse.”

— Thomas Hardy

482. “It troubled her much to see what a great flame a little wildfire was likely to kindle.”

— Thomas Hardy

483. “Her back seemed to be endowed with a sensitiveness to occular beams...”

— Thomas Hardy

484. “Limitation of the capacity is never recognized as a loss by the loser therefrom.”

— Thomas Hardy

485. “No; the charm is worked by common sense, and the spell can only be broke by your acting stupidly.”

— Thomas Hardy

486. “But you are too lovely even to care to be kind as others are.”

— Thomas Hardy

487. “O deliver my heart from this fearful gloom and loneliness; send me great love from somewhere, else I shall die.”

— Thomas Hardy

488. “But loving is not done by months, or method, or rule, or nobody would ever have invented such a phrase as “falling in love.”

— Thomas Hardy

489. “I wish I could say courteous flatteries to you,” the farmer continued in an easier tone, “and put my rugged feeling into a graceful shape: but I have neither power nor patience to learn such things.”

— Thomas Hardy

490. “I always saw there was more to be learnt outside a book than in; and I took my steps accordingly, or I shouldn’t have been the man I am.”

— Thomas Hardy

491. “To give too much room to the latent feeling which is rather common in these days among the unappreciated, that because some remarkably successful men are fools, all remarkably unsuccessful men are geniuses.′ ‘Pretty.”

— Thomas Hardy

492. “Geoffrey’s own heart felt inconveniently large just then.”

— Thomas Hardy

493. “Henery Fray was the first to follow. Then Gabriel arose and went off with Jan Coggan, who had offered him a lodging. A few minutes later, when the remaining ones were on their legs and about to depart, Fray came back again in a hurry. Flourishing his finger ominously he threw a gaze teeming with tidings just where his eye alighted by accident, which happened to be in Joseph Poorgrass’s face.”

— Thomas Hardy

494. “Angel, who was filling the vats with his handful, suddenly ceased, and laid his hands flat upon hers. Her sleeves were rolled far above the elbow, and bending lower he kissed the inside vein of her soft arm.”

— Thomas Hardy

495. “Emotions would be half starved if there were no candle-light.”

— Thomas Hardy

496. “Music drew an angel down, said the poet: but what is that to drawing down worlds!”

— Thomas Hardy

497. “Tess comprese che malgrado i lunghi mesi di segreti pentimenti, di lotte, di autoraccomandazioni, di programmi per un futuro vissuto in solitudine, il consiglio dell’amore avrebbe vinto.”

— Thomas Hardy

498. “To adorn her in somebody else’s eyes; never again in mine.”

— Thomas Hardy

499. “Tess was carried along the wings of the hours.”

— Thomas Hardy

500. “You don’t talk quite like a girl who has had no advantages.”

— Thomas Hardy