857 Quotes by Thomas Hardy

Children begin with detail, and learn up to the general; they begin with the contiguous, and gradually comprehend the universal. The boy seemed to have begun with the generals of life, and never to have concerned himself with the particulars. To him the houses, the willows, the obscure fields beyond, were apparently regarded not as brick residences, pollards, meadows; but as human dwellings in the abstract, vegetation, and the wide dark world.

She was carrying an armful of Bibles for her class, and such was her view of life that events which produced heartache in others wrought beatific smiles upon her – an enviable result, although, in the opinion of Angel, it was obtained by a curiously unnatural sacrifice of humanity to mysticism.

She heard footsteps brushing the grass, and had a consciousnesss that love was encircling her like a perfume.

To give too much room to the latent feeling which is rather common in these days among the unappreciated, that because some remarkably successful men are fools, all remarkably unsuccessful men are geniuses.′ ‘Pretty.

What at night had been perfect and ideal was by day the more or less defective real.

Hate him she did not quite; but he was dust and ashes to her...

Her presence brought memories of such things as Bourbon roses, rubies, and tropical midnights; her moods recalled lotus-eaters and the march in “Athalie”; her motions, the ebb and flow of the sea; her voice, the viola.

The roof was a gymnasium for the winds.

Very well,” said Oak, firmly, with the bearing of one who was going to give his days and nights to Ecclesiastes for ever.