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Famous Thomas Hardy Quotes

“How very lovable her face was to him. Yet there was nothing ethereal about it; all was real vitality, real warmth, real incarnation. And it was in her mouth that this culminated. Eyes almost as deep and speaking he had seen before, and cheeks perhaps as fair; brows as arched, a chin and throat almost as shapely; her mouth he had seen nothing to equal on the face of the earth. To a young man with the least fire in him that little upward lift in the middle of her red top lip was distracting, infatuating, maddening. He had never before seen a woman’s lips and teeth which forced upon his mind with such persistent iteration the old Elizabethan simile of roses filled with snow. Perfect, he, as a lover, might have called them off-hand. But no — they were not perfect. And it was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity.”

LoveBeautyPerfectionImperfection
Book:Tess of the D’Urbervilles
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“To — In vision I roamed the flashing Firmament, So fierce in blazon that the Night waxed wan, As though with awe at orbs of such ostént; And as I thought my spirit ranged on and on In footless traverse through ghast heights of sky, To the last chambers of the monstrous Dome, Where stars the brightest here are lost to the eye: Then, any spot on our own Earth seemed Home! And the sick grief that you were far away Grew pleasant thankfulness that you were near, Who might have been, set on some foreign Sphere, Less than a Want to me, as day by day I lived unware, uncaring all that lay Locked in that Universe taciturn and drear.”

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Author:Thomas Hardy
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“At breakfast, and while they were packing the few remaining articles, he showed his weariness from the night's effort so unmistakably that Tess was on the point of revealing all that had happened; but the reflection that it would anger him, grieve him, stultify him, to know that he had instinctively manifested a fondness for her of which his common sense did not approve, that his inclination had comrpromised his dignity when reason slept, again deterred her. It was too much like laughing at a man when sober for his erratic deeds during intoxication. It just crossed her mind, too, that he might have a faint recollection of his tender vagary and was disinclined to allude to it from a conviction that she would take amatory advantage of the opportunity it gave her of appealing to him anew not to go. ...When Tess had passed over the crest of the hill he turned to go his own way, and hardly knew that he loved her still.”

ConsciousnessTrue LoveUnconsciousness
Book:Tess of the D'urbervilles
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“As you got older, and felt yourself to be at the centre of your time, and not at a point on the 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. If he could only prevent himself growing up! He did not want to be a man!”

Growing Up
Book:Jude the Obscure
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“There was hardly a touch of earth in her love for Clare. To her sublime trustfulness he was all that goodness could be—knew all that a guide, philosopher, and friend should know. She thought every line in the contour of his person the perfection of masculine beauty, his soul the soul of a saint, his intellect that of a seer. The wisdom of her love for him, as love, sustained her dignity; she seemed to be wearing a crown. The compassion of his love for her, as she saw it, made her lift up her heart to him in devotion. He would sometimes catch her large, worshipful eyes, that had no bottom to them looking at him from their depths, as if she saw something immortal before her.”

LoveDignityDevotion
Book:Tess of the D’Urbervilles
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“It is an ignorant place, except as to the townspeople, artisans, drunkards, and paupers, she said, perverse still at his differing from her. They see life as it is, of course; but few of the people in the colleges do. You prove it in your own person. You are one of the very men Christminster was intended for when the colleges were founded; a man with a passion for learning, but no money, or opportunities, or friends. But you were elbowed off the pavement by the millionaires' sons.”

RealityMoneyEducationEquality
Book:Jude the Obscure
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“She might have seen what had bowed her head so profoundly - the thought of the world’s concern at her situation - was founded on an 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. Even to friends she was no more than a frequently passing thought. If she made herself miserable the livelong night and day it was only this much to them - ‘Ah, she makes herself unhappy.’ If she tried to be cheerful, to dismiss all care, to take pleasure in the daylight, the flowers, the baby, she could only be this idea to them - ‘Ah, she bears it very well.”

MoralityShameMoralsSelf Judgment
Book:Hardy : Tess of the D'Urbervilles
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“At once a voice arose among The bleak twigs overhead In a full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited; An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, In blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom. So little cause for carollings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware.”

PoetryHopeNatureSorrow
Book:The Complete Poems
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“Ma qualcuno potrebbe chiedermi: dove si trovava l'angelo custode di Tess? Esisteva una provvidenza che tutelasse la sua ingenua fiducia? Forse, come quell'altra divinità di cui parlava l'ironico Tisbita, stava chiacchierando, o era inseguito, o era in viaggio o forse, stava dormendo e non si era svegliato. Perché su questo bel tessuto femminile, sensibile come una sottile ragnatela e sino ad allora immacolato come la neve veniva tracciato un disegno così rozzo come quello che era destinato a ricevere? Perché così di sovente ciò che è rozzo s'impossessa di ciò che è più delicato: l'uomo sbagliato, di una donna, la donna sbagliata, di un uomo? Migliaia d'anni di filosofia analitica non sono riusciti a spiegarlo al nostro concetto di ordine. Si potrebbe infatti ammettere la possibilità di una vendetta nascosta nella attuale catastrofe; senza dubbio qualche antenato di Tess d'Urberville, in cotta di maglia, tornando a casa eccitato da una rissa aveva usato lo stesso metro, ancor più spietato forse, verso le contadine del suo tempo. Ma, se far ricadere i peccati dei padri sui figli possa essere una morale abbastanza valida per i teologi, questa viene rifiutata dalla comune natura umana; e quindi non servirebbe a migliorare la situazione. La gente come Tess, in quei luoghi sperduti, non si stanca mai di ripetere col tono fatalistico che le è proprio: Doveva accadere.”

FaithDestinyRapeThomas HardyTess Dei D Urberville
Book:Tess of the D'urbervilles
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“Channel Firing That night your great guns, unawares, Shook all our coffins as we lay, And broke the chancel window-squares, We thought it was the Judgment-day And sat upright. While drearisome Arose the howl of wakened hounds: The mouse let fall the altar-crumb, The worms drew back into the mounds, The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, “No; It’s gunnery practice out at sea Just as before you went below; The world is as it used to be: “All nations striving strong to make Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters They do no more for Christés sake Than you who are helpless in such matters. “That this is not the judgment-hour For some of them’s a blessed thing, For if it were they’d have to scour Hell’s floor for so much threatening . . . “Ha, ha. It will be warmer when I blow the trumpet (if indeed I ever do; for you are men, And rest eternal sorely need).” So down we lay again. “I wonder, Will the world ever saner be,” Said one, “than when He sent us under In our indifferent century!” And many a skeleton shook his head. “Instead of preaching forty year,” My neighbour Parson Thirdly said, “I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.” Again the guns disturbed the hour, Roaring their readiness to avenge, As far inland as Stourton Tower, And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.”

WarPoetry
Book:Satires of Circumstances: Lyrics and Reveries with Miscellaneous Pieces
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“Hap If but some vengeful god would call to me From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing, Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy, That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!” Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die, Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited; Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I Had willed and meted me the tears I shed. But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain, And why unblooms the best hope ever sown? —Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain, And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . . These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.”

PoetrySufferingChanceAtheism
Book:Wessex Poems
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“Proud Songsters The thrushes sing as the sun is going, And the finches whistle in ones and pairs, And as it gets dark loud nightingales In bushes Pipe, as they can when April wears, As if all Time were theirs. These are brand-new birds of twelve-months’ growing, Which a year ago, or less than twain, No finches were, nor nightingales, Nor thrushes, But only particles of grain, And earth, and air, and rain.”

PoetryTimeNature
Book:Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres
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“In a Whispering Gallery That whisper takes the voice Of a Spirit, speaking to me, Close, but invisible, And throws me under a spell At the kindling vision it brings; And for a moment I rejoice, And believe in transcendent things That would make of this muddy earth A spot for the splendid birth Of everlasting lives, Whereto no night arrives; And this gaunt gray gallery A tabernacle of worth On this drab-aired afternoon, When you can barely see Across its hazed lacune If opposite aught there be Of fleshed humanity Wherewith I may commune; Or if the voice so near Be a soul’s voice floating here.”

PoetryIsolationLonliness
Book:Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses
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“Tess, Tess, I was on the way to salvation till I saw you again!" he said, feverishly shaking her, as if she were a child. "And why then have you tempted me? I was firm as a man could be till I saw those eyes and that mouth again—surely there never was such a maddening mouth since Eve's!" His voice sank, and a hot archness shot from his own black eyes. "You temptress, Tess; you dear damned witch of Babylon—I could not resist you as soon as I met you again!”

Obsession
Author:Thomas Hardy
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“The yard was a little centre of regeneration. Here, with keen edges and smooth curves, were forms in the exact likeness of those he had seen abraded and time-eaten on the walls. These were the ideas in modern prose which the lichened colleges presented in old poetry. Even some of those antiques might have been called prose when they were new. They had done nothing but wait, and had become poetical. How easy to the smallest building; how impossible to most men.”

PoetryArchitectureBuildings
Book:Jude the Obscure
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“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; with totally differing aims the method is the same on both sides. But the understood incentive on the woman's part was wanting here. Besides, Bathsheba's position as absolute mistress of a farm and house was a novel one, and the novelty had not yet begun to wear off.”

MarriageFeminismMen And WomenIndependenceVictorianThomas HardyFar From The Madding CrowdBathsheba EverdeneGender PoliticsSexual Politics
Book:Far From the Madding Crowd
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“Suddenly an unexpected series of sounds began to be heard in this place up against the starry sky. They were the notes of Oak´s flute. It came from the direction of a small dark object under the hedge - a shephard´s hut - now presenting an outline to which an unintiated person might have been puzzled to attach either meaning or use. ... Being a man not without a frequent consciousness that there was some charm in this life he led, he stood still after looking at the sky as a useful instrument, and regarded it in an appreciative spirit, as a work of art superlatively beautiful. 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. ... Oak´s motions, though they had a quiet energy, were slow, and their deliberateness accorded well with his occupation. Fitness being the basis of beauty, nobody could have denied tha his steady swings and turns in and about the flock had elements of grace. His special power, morally, physically, and mentally, was static. ... Oak was an intensely human man: indee, his humanity tore in pieces any politic intentions of his which bordered on strategy, and carried him on as by gravitation. A shadow in his life had always been that his flock should end in mutton - that a day could find a shepherd an arrant traitor to his gentle sheep.”

NatureFreedomIndependenceGabrielCoherenceShepherdGabriel Oak
Book:Far From the Madding Crowd
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“The Shadow on the Stone I went by the Druid stone That stands in the garden white and lone, And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows That at some moments there are thrown From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing, And they shaped in my imagining To the shade that a well-known head and shoulders Threw there when she was gardening. I thought her behind my back, Yea, her I long had learned to lack, And I said: “I am sure you are standing behind me, Though how do you get into this old track?” And there was no sound but the fall of a leaf As a sad response; and to keep down grief I would not turn my head to discover That there was nothing in my belief. Yet I wanted to look and see That nobody stood at the back of me; But I thought once more: “Nay, I’ll not unvision A shape which, somehow, there may be.” So I went on softly from the glade, And left her behind me throwing her shade, As she were indeed an apparition— My head unturned lest my dream should fade.”

PoetryLossGrief
Book:Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses
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“In Tenebris I Wintertime nighs; But my bereavement-pain It cannot bring again: Twice no one dies. Flower-petals flee; But, since it once hath been, No more that severing scene Can harrow me. Birds faint in dread: I shall not lose old strength In the lone frost's black length: Strength long since fled! Leaves freeze to dun; But friends can not turn cold This season as of old For him with none. Tempests may scath; But love can not make smart Again this year his heart Who no heart hath. Black is night's cope; But death will not appal One who, past doubtings all, Waits in unhope.”

DeathPoetryHopeLossGriefSorrowWinter
Book:Poems of the Past and the Present
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“And they will pause just for an instant, and give a sigh to me, and think, "Poor girl!" believing they do great justice to my memory by this. But they will never, never realize that it was my single opportunity of existence, as well as of doing my duty, which they are regarding; they will not feel that what to them is but a thought, easily held in those two words of pity, "Poor girl!" was a whole life to me, as full of hours, minutes, and peculiar minutes, of hopes and dreads, smiles, whisperings, tears, as theirs: that it was my world, what is to them their world, and that in that life of mine, however much I cared for them, only as the thought I seem to them to be. Nobody can enter into another's nature truly, that's what is so grievous.”

LifeDeathGrievingMourning
Book:Desperate Remedies
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“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. The North Star was directly in the winds eye, and since evening the Bear had swung round it outwardly to the east, till he was now at a right angle with the meridian. A difference of colour in the stars - oftener read of than seen in England - was really perceptible here. The sovereign brilliancy of Sirius pierced the eye with a steely glitter, the star called Capella was yellow, Aldebaran and Betelgueux shone with a fiery red.”

NatureBeautyConstellationsNight Sky
Book:Far From the Madding Crowd
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“Eustacia Vye was the raw material of a divinity. On Olympus she would have done well with a little preparation. She had the passions and instincts which make a model goddess, that is, those which make not quite a model woman. Had it been possible for the earth and mankind to be entirely in her grasp for a while, had she handled the distaff, the spindle, and the shears at her own free will, few in the world would have noticed the change in government. . . .”

Greek MythologyBeautiful WritingEustacia Vye
Book:The Return of the Native
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