857 Quotes by Thomas Hardy

But what between the poor men I won’t have, and the rich men who won’t have me, I stand as a pelican in the wilderness!

That one true heart was left behind! What feeling do we ever find, to equal among human kind, a dog’s fidelity!

A profile was visible against the dull monochrome of cloud around her; and it was as though side shadows from the features of Sappho and Mrs. Siddons had converged upwards from the tomb to form an image like neither but suggesting both.

Gabriel Oak: “It’s time for you to fight your own battles... and win them too.

She went stealthily as a cat through this profusion of growth, gathering cuckoo-spittle on her skirts, cracking snails that were underfoot, staining her hands with thistle-milk and slug-slime, and rubbing off upon her naked arms sticky blights which, though snow-white on the apple-tree trunks, made madder stains on her skin; thus she drew quite near to Clare, still unobserved of him.

The season developed and matured. Another year’s instalment of flowers, leaves, nightingales, thrushes, finches, and such ephemeral creatures, took up their positions where only a year ago others had stood in their place when these were nothing more than germs and inorganic particles. Rays from the sunrise drew forth the buds and stretched them into long stalks, lifted up sap in noiseless streams, opened petals, and sucked out scents in invisible jets and breathings.

In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving.

Geoffrey’s own heart felt inconveniently large just then.

Sometimes more bitterness is sown in five minutes than can be got rid of in a whole life;.