Thomas Hardy Quotes (206 Quotes)



    Who's in the next room - who I seemed to see Somebody in the dawning passing through, Unknown to me.

    What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away Ere the barncocks say Night is growing gray, Leaving all that here can win us

    I prefer the large intention of an unskillful artist to the trivial intention of an accomplished one in other words, I am more interested in the high ideas of a feeble executant than in the high execution of a feeble thinker.

    On that far-famed spot by Lodi
    Where Napoleon clove his way
    To his fame, when like a god he
    Bent the nations to his sway.


    Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down you'd treat if met where any bar is, or help to half-a-crown.


    I am the family face; flesh perishes, I live on.

    Her life was the price she would pay for that whine--
    For a child by the man she did not love.

    So little cause for carolings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware.

    Since as a child I used to lie
    Upon the leaze and watch the sky,
    Never, I own, expected I
    That life would all be fair.

    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.

    There is a condition worse than blindness, and that is, seeing something that isn't there.

    We ought to feel deep cheerfulness that a happy Providence kept it from being any worse.

    You, and those like you, take your fill of pleasure on earth by making the life of such as me bitter and black with sorrow and then it is a fine thing, when you have had enough of that, to think of securing your pleasure in heaven by becoming converted

    The value of old age depends upon the person who reaches it. To some men of early performance it is useless. To others, who are late to develop, it just enables them to finish the job.

    I was court-martial in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.

    My spirit will not haunt the mound
    Above my breast,
    But travel, memory-possessed,
    To where my tremulous being found
    Life largest, best.

    The sky was clear - remarkably clear - and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse.

    That mirror
    Can test each mortal when unaware;
    Yea, that strange mirror
    May catch his last thoughts, whole life foul or fair,
    Glassing it -- where?

    Buta stirring thrills the air Like to sounds of joyance there That the rages Of the ages Shall be cancelled, and deliverance offered from the darts that were, Consciousness the Will informing, till it fashion all things fair.

    The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes.

    That man's silence is wonderful to listen to.

    It was that period in the vernal quarter when we may suppose the Dryads to be waking for the season. The vegetable world begins to move and swell and the saps to rise, till in the completest silence of lone gardens and trackless plantations, where everything seems helpless and still after the bond and slavery of frost, there are bustlings, strainings, united thrusts, and pulls-all-together, in comparison with which the powerful tugs of cranes and pulleys in a noisy city are but pigmy efforts.

    Dialect words are those terrible marks of the beast to the truly genteel.

    Unto this wood I came As to a nest Dreaming that sylvan peace Offered the harrowed ease- Nature a soft release From men's unrest

    One pondered on the life of man,
    His hopes, his endings, and began
    To rate the Market's sordid war
    As something scarce worth living for.

    O memory, where is now my youth,
    Who used to say that life was truth?

    And blended pulsing life with lives long done,
    Till Time seemed fiction, Past and Present one.

    Her step's mechanic ways
    Had lost the life of May's;
    Her laugh, once sweet in swell,
    Spoilt Amabel.

    Silent Ah, he is silent He can keep silence well. That mans silence is wonderful to listen to.

    A well proportioned mind is one which shows no particular bias one of which we may safely say that it will never cause its owner to be confined as a madman, tortured as a heretic, or crucified as a blasphemer. Also, on the other hand, that it will never cause him to be applauded as a prophet, revered as a priest, or exalted as a king. Its usual blessings are happiness and mediocrity.

    My argument is that War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading.

    Believe me, Lost One, Love is lovelier
    The more it shapes its moans in selfish-wise.

    How much I love I know not, life not known,
    Save as some unit I would add love by;
    But this I know, my being is but thine own--
    Fused from its separateness by ecstasy.

    This bears his missives of life and death
    With quickening breath,
    On whom the rain comes down.

    A Troubadour-youth I rambled
    With Life for lyre,
    The beats of being raging
    In me like fire.

    The excessive regard of parents for their children, and their dislike of other people's is, like class feeling, patriotism, save-your-soul-ism, and other virtues, a mean exclusiveness at bottom.

    If all hearts were open and all desires known -- as they would be if people showed their souls -- how many gapings, sighings, clenched fists, knotted brows, broad grins, and red eyes should we see in the market-place

    In a solitude of the sea
    Deep from human vanity,
    And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

    With eye and cry of love illimited
    Upon her Heart-king.


    Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.

    The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him.

    A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.

    Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.

    O life with the sad seared face,
    I weary of seeing thee,
    And thy draggled cloak, and thy hobbling pace,
    And thy too-forced pleasantry!

    He met her with a careless air,
    As though he'd ceased to find her fair,
    And said: "True love is dust to me;
    I cannot kiss: I tire of thee!

    No one can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure.



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