857 Quotes by Thomas Hardy

The luminary was a golden-haired, beaming, mild-eyed, God-like creature, gazing down in the vigour and intentness of youth upon an earth that was brimming with interest for him.

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.

I agree to the conditions, Angel; because you know best what my punishment ought to be; only – only – don’t make it more than I can bear!

Nature does not often say “See!” to her poor creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply “Here!” to a body’s cry of “Where?

Having begun to love you, I love you for ever – in all changes, in all disgraces, because you are yourself.

What are my books but one plea against “man’s inhumanity to man” – to woman – and to the lower animals?

In justice to desponding men, it is as well to remember that the brighter endurance of women at these epochs – invaluable, sweet, angelic, as it is – owes more of its origin to a narrower vision that shuts out many of the leaden-eyed despairs in the van, than to a hopefulness intense enough to quell them.

It may have been observed that there is no regular path for getting out of love as there is for getting in.

The club of Marlott alone lived to uphold the local Cerealia. It had walked for hundreds of years, if not as benefit-club, as votive sisterhood of some sort; and it walked still.