Far From The Madding Crowd

by Thomas Hardy

Apparently he had some time ago reached that entrance to middle age at which a man’s aspect naturally ceases to alter for the term of a dozen years or so; and, artificially, a woman’s does likewise.

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

Yet Farmer Boldwood, whether by nature kind or the reverse to kind, did not exercise kindness, here. The rarest offerings of the purest loves are but a self-indulgence, and no generosity at all.

It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession; with totally differing aims the method is the same on both sides.

The most vigorous expression of a resolution does not always coincide with the greatest vigour of the resolution itself. It is often flung out as a sort of prop to support a decaying conviction which, whilst strong, required no enunciation to prove it so.

The spring tides were going by without floating him off, and the neap might soon come which could not.