Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” Quotes (41 Quotes)

Never in her life - she could swear it from the bottom of her soul - had she ever intended to do wrong; yet these hard judgments had come. Whatever her sins, they were not sins of intention, but of inadvertence, and why should she have been punished so persistently?

A sort of halo, an occidental glow, came over life then. Troubles and other realities took on themselves a metaphysical impalpability, sinking to mere mental phenomena for serene contemplation, and no longer stood as pressing concretions which chafed body and soul.

The beauty or ugliness of a character lay not only in its achievements, but in its aims and impulses; its true history lay, not among things done, but among things willed.

How strange and god-like was a composer's power, who from the grave could lead through sequences of emotion, which he alone had felt at first, a girl like her who had never heard of his name, and never would have a clue to his personality.

Nobody had beheld the gravitation of the two into one

A strong woman who recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.

The only exercise that Tess took at this time was after dark; and it was then, when out in the woods, that she seemed least solitary.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 if day and the suspense of night neutralize each other, leaving absolute mental liberty.It is then that the plight of being alive becomes attenuated to its least possible dimensions.

I agree to the conditions, Angel; because you know best what my punishment ought to be; only - only - don't make it more than I can bear!

O, you have torn my life all to pieces... made me be what I prayed you in pity not to make me be again!

As soon as she could discern the outline of the house, it had all its old effect upon Tess's imagination. Part of her body and life it ever seemed to be; the slope of its dormers, the finish of its gables, the broken courses of brick which topped the chimney, all had something in common with her personal character.

The stage of mental comfort to which they had arrived at this hour was one wherein their souls expanded beyond their skins, and spread their personalities warmly through the room.

I wish I had never been born--there or anywhere else.

She tried to argue, and tell him that he had mixed in his dull brain two matters, theology and morals, which in the primitive days of mankind had been quite distinct.

Beauty lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized.

They were as sublime as the moon and stars above them, and the moon ans stars were as ardent as they.

If an offense come out of the truth, better is it that the offense come than that the truth be concealed.

She was but a transient impression, half forgotten.

Behind him the hill are open, the sun blazes down upon fields so large as to give unenclosed character to the landscape, the lanes are white, the hedges low and plashed, the atmosphere colourless.

This hobble of being alive is rather serious, don't you think so?

It was still early, and the sun's lower limb was just free of the hill, his rays, ungenial and peering, addressed the eye rather than the touch as yet.

So do flux and reflux--the rhythm of change--alternate and persist in everything under the sky.

Clare had studied the curves of those lips so many times that he could reproduce them mentally with ease: and now, as they again confronted him, clothed with colour and life, they sent an aura over his flesh, a breeze through his nerves, which wellnigh produced a qualm; and actually produced, by some mysterious physiological process, a prosaic sneeze.

What woman, indeed, among the most faithful adherents of the truth, believes the promises and threats of the Word in the sense in which she believes in her own children, or would not throw her theology to the wind if weighed against their happiness?

It was terribly beautiful to Tess today, for since her eyes last fell upon it she had learnt that the serpent hisses where the sweet birds sing.

So each had a private little sun for her soul to bask in; some dream, some affection, some hobby, or at least some remote and distant hope....

Did it never strike your mind that what every woman says, some women may feel?

When yellow lights struggle with blue shades in hairlike lines.

La bellezza per lei, come per tutti quelli che hanno molto sentito, non risiedeva nelle cose ma in ciò che esse simboleggiavano

Tess was awake before dawn - at the marginal minute of the dark when the grove is still mute, save for one prophetic bird who sings with a clear-voiced conviction that he at least knows the correct time of day, the rest preserving silence as if equally convinced that he is mistaken.

Do you know that I have undergone three quarters of this labour entirely for the sake of the fourth quarter?