Top 500 Thomas Hardy Quotes (2024 Update)
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401. “It was still early, and though 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. There was not a human soul near. Sad October and her sadder self seemed the only two existences haunting that lane.”

— Thomas Hardy

402. “She had not meant him to translate her words about returning home so literally at the first; she had not intended him to learn her secret; but more than all she was not able to endure the perception of his learning it and continuing unmoved.”

— Thomas Hardy

403. “We have missed because we tried to miss, I suppose.”

— Thomas Hardy

404. “Strange to say of a woman in full bloom and vigor, she always allowed her interlocutors to finish their statements before rejoining with hers.”

— Thomas Hardy

405. “Many of her thoughts were perfect syllogisms; unluckily they always remained thoughts.”

— Thomas Hardy

406. “Tess shrank into herself as if she had been struck. Often enough had he tried to reach those lips against her consent – often had he said gaily that her mouth and breath tasted of the butter and eggs and milk and honey on which she mainly lived, that he drew sustenance from them, and other follies of that sort. But he did not care for them now.”

— Thomas Hardy

407. “She could have never believed in the morning that her colorless inner world would before night become as animated as water under a microscope.”

— Thomas Hardy

408. “The fact that four centuries had neither proved it to be founded on a mistake, inspired any hatred of its purpose, nor given rise to any reaction that had battered it down, invested this simple grey effort of old minds with a repose, if not a grandeur, which a too curious reflection was apt to disturb in its ecclesiastical and military compeers.”

— Thomas Hardy

409. “One’s pretty lively when ruined.”

— Thomas Hardy

410. “The lad stood before Durbeyfield, and contemplated his length from crown to toe.”

— Thomas Hardy

411. “The chief pleasure connected with asking an opinion lies in not adopting it.”

— Thomas Hardy

412. “He knew he should go to see her again, according to her invitation. Those earnest men he read of, the saints, whom Sue, with gentle irreverence, called his demi-gods, would have shunned such encounters if they doubted their own strength. But he could not. He might fast and pray during the whole interval, but the human was more powerful in him than the Divine.”

— Thomas Hardy

413. “Principles which could be subverted by feeling in one direction were liable to the same catastrophe in another. The.”

— Thomas Hardy

414. “She is a bold and passionate woman, fighting to earn respect as a farm owner and over the course of the novel she has to endure much suffering, which enhances her better qualities while diminishing some elements of her less admirable traits.”

— Thomas Hardy

415. “If she had not been imprudence incarnate, she would not have acted as she did when she met Henchard by accident a day or two later.”

— Thomas Hardy

416. “Idiosyncrasy and vicissitude had combined to stamp Sergeant Troy as an exceptional being.”

— Thomas Hardy

417. “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?”

— Thomas Hardy

418. “And all this while the subtle-souled girl asking herself why she was born, why sitting in a room, and blinking at the candle; why things around her had taken the shape they wore in preference to every other possible shape.”

— Thomas Hardy

419. “No. When I want a broad-minded opinion for general enlightenment, distinct from special advice, I never go to a man who deals in the subject professionally.”

— Thomas Hardy

420. “The fact is,” said d’Uberville drily, “whatever your dear husband believed you accept, and whatever he rejected you reject, without the least inquiry or reasoning on your own part. That’s just like you women. Your mind is enslaved to his.”

— Thomas Hardy

421. “Some people look upon marriage as a short cut that way, but it has been known to fail.”

— Thomas Hardy

422. “Ah, want of an object to live for – that’s all is the matter with me!”

— Thomas Hardy

423. “I think of people more kindly when I am away from them.”

— Thomas Hardy

424. “He read whenever he could as he walked to and from his work.”

— Thomas Hardy

425. “Had Philip’s warlike son been intellectually so far ahead as to have attempted civilisation without bloodshed, he would have been twice the godlike hero that he seemed; but nobody would have heard of an Alexander.”

— Thomas Hardy

426. “We are acting by the letter; and ’the letter killeth.”

— Thomas Hardy

427. “I object to that conversation!” interposed the old woman. “I was not capable enough to hear what I said, and what is said out of my hearing is not evidence.”

— Thomas Hardy

428. “His supper still remained spread; and going to the front door, and softly setting it open, he returned to the room and sat as watchers sit on Old-Midsummer eves, expecting the phantom of the Beloved. But she did not come.”

— Thomas Hardy

429. “Your next world is your next world, and not to be squandered offhand.”

— Thomas Hardy

430. “I have no fear of men, as such, nor of their books.”

— Thomas Hardy

431. “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

432. “Allow me to come with you,’ he said, accompanying her to the door, and again showing by his behaviour how much he was impressed with her. His influence over her had vanished with the musical chords, and she turned her back upon him. ‘May I come?’ he repeated. ‘No, no. The distance is not a quarter of a mile – it is really not necessary, thank you,’ she said quietly. And.”

— Thomas Hardy

433. “Our moods meet in the wrong places.”

— Thomas Hardy

434. “Hastily flinging her cloak around her she opened the door and followed, putting out the candles as if she were never coming back. The rain was over and the night was now clear.”

— Thomas Hardy

435. “Between himself and her there was that kind of division which is more insurmountable than enmity; for estrangements produced by good judgment will last when those of feeling break down in smiles. Not the lovers who part in passion, but the lovers who part in friendship, are those who most frequently part forever.”

— Thomas Hardy

436. “To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement.”

— Thomas Hardy

437. “For a moment he seemed impressed with the speaking loneliness of the scene, or rather with the complete abstraction from all its compass of the sights and sounds of man.”

— Thomas Hardy

438. “This was a practical application of the principle that a half-feigned and fictitious faith is better than no faith at all.”

— Thomas Hardy

439. “How did this remarkable reappearance effect itself when he was supposed by many to be at the bottom of the sea?”

— Thomas Hardy

440. “Oh my love, my love, why do I love you so?” she whispered there alone; “for she you love is not myself, but one in my image; the one I might have been!”

— Thomas Hardy

441. “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!”

— Thomas Hardy

442. “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

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

— Thomas Hardy

444. “The inspection of these chasms brought him a second pulsation of that old horror which he had used to describe to Viviette as produced in him by bottomlessness in the north heaven. The ghostly finger of limitless vacancy touched him now on the other side.”

— Thomas Hardy

445. “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

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

— Thomas Hardy

447. “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

448. “Your worldly failure, if you have failed, is to your credit rather than to your blame. 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.”

— Thomas Hardy

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

— Thomas Hardy

450. “Possibly she would go on inflicting such pains again and again, and grieving for the sufferer again and again, in all her colossal inconsistency.”

— Thomas Hardy