The Return of the Native

by Thomas Hardy

and to know that everything around and underneath had been from prehistoric times as unaltered as the stars overhead, gave ballast to the mind

Pleasure not known beforehand is half wasted; to anticipate it is to double it.

She gave some attention to her flowers, but it was perfunctorily bestowed, for they no longer charmed her.

as he slept on in that profound sleep which is the result of physical labour carried on in circumstances that wake no nervous fear.

The pale lunar touches which make beauties of hags lent divinity to this face, already beautiful.

'Beware the fury of a patient man'

The fire soon flared up the chimney, giving the room an appearance of comfort that was doubled by contrast with the drumming of the storm without, which snapped at the window-panes and breathed into the chimney strange low utterances that seemed to be the prologue to some tragedy.

Even supposing him capable of loving again, that love would be a plant of slow and laboured growth, and in the end only small and sickly, like an autumn-hatched bird.

But he felt this as an economist merely, and not as a lover.

Neither to raise men nor to lay 'em low—that shows a poor do-nothing spirit indeed."