857 Quotes by Thomas Hardy

If these two noticed Angel’s growing social ineptness, he noticed their growing mental limitations. Felix seemed to him all Church; Cubbert all College... Each brother candidly recognized there were a few unimportant scores of millions outside in civilized society, persons who were neither University men nor churchmen; but they were to be tolerated rather than reckoned with and respected.

He was at the brightest period of masculine growth, for his intellect and his emotions were clearly separated: he had passed the time during which the influence of youth indiscriminately mingles them in the character of impulse, and he had not yet arrived at the stage wherein they become united again, in the character of prejudice, by the influence of a wife and family.

Some people look upon marriage as a short cut that way, but it has been known to fail.

He admired her so much that he used to light the candle three times a night to look at her.

He had no wish to converse with her: that his bright lady and himself formed one group, exclusively their own, and containing no others in the world, was enough.

You were nothing to me once, and I was contented; you are now nothing to me again, and how different the second nothing is from the first! Would to God you had never taken me up, since it was only to throw me down!

How did this remarkable reappearance effect itself when he was supposed by many to be at the bottom of the sea?

Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it. Lo, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come within.

Oh my love, my love, why do I love you so?” she whispered there alone; “for she you love is not myself, but one in my image; the one I might have been!