Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Thomas Hardy

Quote by Thomas Hardy

Work

Far From the Madding Crowd

This novel follows the romantic entanglements of Bathsheba Everdene, a strong-willed woman living in the English countryside, as she navigates love, marriage, and the complexities of her social environment. more

Author

Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy, a British novelist born on June 2, 1840, and died on January 11, 1928, is renowned for his novels that depict rural life, reflecting the social changes in 19th-century England. His works often carry a sense of pessimism, depicting the fates of characters with sympathy. more

You May Also Like

“The most striking impression was that of an overwhelming bright light. I had seen under similar conditions the explosion of a large amount—100 tons—of normal explosives in the April test, and I was flabbergasted by the new spectacle. We saw the whole sky flash with unbelievable brightness in spite of the very dark glasses we wore. Our eyes were accommodated to darkness, and thus even if the sudden light had been only normal daylight it would have appeared to us much brighter than usual, but we know from measurements that the flash of the bomb was many times brighter than the sun. In a fraction of a second, at our distance, one received enough light to produce a sunburn. I was near Fermi at the time of the explosion, but I do not remember what we said, if anything. I believe that for a moment I thought the explosion might set fire to the atmosphere and thus finish the earth, even though I knew that this was not possible.”

“So Roy's tears were understandable when he remembered tying animals to all those stakes. Such a cruel experiment had been performed on animals, of course, on sheep and pigs and cattle and horses and monkeys and ducks and chickens and geese, but surely not on a zoo such as Roy described. To hear him tell it, he had tethered peacocks and snow leopards and gorillas and crocodiles and albatrosses to the stakes. In his big brain, Bikini became the exact reverse of Noah's ark. Two of every sort of animal had been brought there in order to be atom-bombed.”

“As the tail on our back disappeared as we no longer had any use for it, nuclear weapons will also disappear once we realize, we no longer have any need for them. But no matter how much we daydream, it will never happen as some sort of grand geopolitical gesture of international collaboration - somebody has to take the first step - one nuclear-capable state has to take that first leap of bold faith and naive trust! The question is, who will it be? The first nuclear nation to abandon its nuclear weapons, will be the First Peacemaking Nation of Earth - and their head of state, the First Peacemaker.”