857 Quotes by Thomas Hardy

Well – I’m an outsider to the end of my days!

Boldwood, whose unreasoning devotion to Bathsheba could only be characterized as a fond madness which neither time nor circumstance, evil nor good report, could weaken or destroy. This fevered hope had grown up again like a grain of mustard-seed during the quiet which followed the hasty conjecture that Troy was drowned. He nourished it fearfully, and almost shunned the contemplation of it in earnest, lest facts should reveal the wildness of the dream. Bathsheba having at last been persuaded.

Don’t for God’s sake speak as saint to sinner, but as you yourself to me myself – poor me!

She tried to pray to God, but it was her husband who really had her supplication. Her idolatry of this man was such that she herself almost feared it to be ill-omened. She was conscious of the notion expressed by Friar Lawerence, “These violent delights have violent ends.” It might be too desperate for human conditions – too rank, too wild, too deadly.

You are nothing to me – nothing,” said Troy, heartlessly. “A ceremony before a priest doesn’t make a marriage. I am not morally yours.

She knew how to hit to a hair’s-breadth that moment of evening when the light and the darkness are so evenly balanced that the constraint of day and the suspense of night neutralize each other, leaving absolute mental liberty.

Rays of male vision seem to have a tickling effect upon virgin faces in rural districts;.

The daylight has nothing to show me, since you are not here, and I don’t like to see the rooks and starlings in the fields, because I grieve and grieve to miss you who used to see them with me. I long for only one thing in heaven or earth or under the earth, to meet you my own dear! Come to me – come to me, and save me from what threatens me! – Your faithful heartbroken.

That the party was intended to be a truly jovial one there was no room for doubt.