857 Quotes by Thomas Hardy

To keep in the rear of opportunity in matters of indulgence is as valuable a habit as to keep abreast of opportunity in matters of enterprise.

He had, he verily believed, overcome all tendency to fly to liquor – which, indeed, he had never done from taste, but merely as an escape from intolerable misery of the mind.

But the bitter thing is, that when I was rich I didn’t need what I could have, and now I be poor I can’t have what I need!

Biblioll College. Sir, – I have read your letter with interest; and, judging from your description of yourself as a working-man, I venture to think that you will have a much better chance of success in life by remaining in your own sphere and sticking to your trade than by adopting any other course. That, therefore, is what I advise you to do. Yours faithfully, T. Tetuphenay. To Mr. J. Fawley, Stone-mason.

If ever tears and pleadings have served the weak to fight the strong, let them do so now!

The clash of discord between mood and matter here was forced painfully home to the heart; and, as in laughter there are more dreadful phases than in tears, so was there in the steadiness of this agonized man an expression deeper than a cry.

As for his look, it was a natural cheerfulness striving against depression without, and not quite succeeding. The look suggested issolation, but it revealed something more. As Usual with bright natures, the deity that lies ignominiously chained within a ephemeral human carcase shone out of him like a ray.

And the thorny crown of this sad conception was that she whom he really did prefer in a cursory way to the rest, she who knew herself to be more impassioned in nature, cleverer, more beautiful than they, was in the eyes of propriety far less worthy of him than the homelier ones whom he ignored.

I may do some good before I am dead – be a sort of success as a frightful example of what not to do; and so illustrate a moral story.