The Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) Quotes

“She is a bold and passionate woman, fighting to earn respect as a farm owner and over the course of the novel she has to endure much suffering, which enhances her better qualities while diminishing some elements of her less admirable traits.”
― Thomas Hardy, Complete Works of Thomas Hardy

“The industrialisation of England had quickened during Hardy’s life and in the novel he places great importance on rural culture and the need of man to interact with, and understand the natural world, however indifferent it may be to human survival. The author does not sketch a portrait of an idyllic rural scene, but highlights and details the devastating consequences and brute force of the natural world. Hardy uses these disasters to underline the prominence of chance or luck in life, rather than benevolent design by a creator and how this might impact moral decisions. Impressionist art also influences Hardy’s perception of reality and what knowledge each individual is capable of attaining in any situation.”
― Thomas Hardy, Complete Works of Thomas Hardy

“That the man and woman were husband and wife, and the parents of the girl in arms there could be little doubt. No other than such relationship would have accounted for the atmosphere of stale familiarity which the trio carried along with them like a nimbus as they moved down the”
― Thomas Hardy, Complete Works of Thomas Hardy

“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 of day and the suspense of night neutralize each other, leaving absolute mental liberty.”
― Thomas Hardy, The Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)

“Of all the ingenious and cruel satires that from the beginning till now have been stuck like knives into womankind, surely there is not one so lacerating to them, and to us who love them, as the trite old fact, that the most wretched of men can, in the twinkling of an eye, find a wife ready to be more wretched still for the sake of his company. Edward hastened to despatch his”
― Thomas Hardy, Complete Works of Thomas Hardy

“Why?’ he asked. ‘Why should I praise her if she doesn’t deserve it? I say exactly what I have often admired Sterne for saying in one of his letters — that neither reason nor Scripture asks us to speak nothing but good of the dead. And now, madam,’ he continued, after a short interval of thought, ‘I may, perhaps, hope that you will assist me, or rather not thwart me, in endeavouring to win the love of a young lady living about you, one in whom I am much interested already.”
― Thomas Hardy, Complete Works of Thomas Hardy

“Yes,’ he said; ‘and not a dishonourable one. What held me back was just that one thing — a sense of morality that perhaps, madam, you did not give me credit for.’ The latter words were spoken with a mien and tone of pride.”
― Thomas Hardy, Complete Works of Thomas Hardy

“Allow me to come with you,’ he said, accompanying her to the door, and again showing by his behaviour how much he was impressed with her. His influence over her had vanished with the musical chords, and she turned her back upon him. ‘May I come?’ he repeated. ‘No, no. The distance is not a quarter of a mile — it is really not necessary, thank you,’ she said quietly. And”
― Thomas Hardy, Complete Works of Thomas Hardy

“You’ll excuse me, Mrs. Graye,’ she said, ‘but ’tis the old gentleman’s birthday, and they always have a lot of people to dinner on that day, though he’s getting up in years now. However, none of them are sleepers — she generally keeps the house pretty clear of lodgers (being a lady with no intimate friends, though many acquaintances), which, though it gives us less to do, makes it all the duller for the younger maids in the house.’ Mrs. Morris then proceeded to give in fragmentary speeches an outline of the constitution and government of the estate.”
― Thomas Hardy, Complete Works of Thomas Hardy

“There are two ways of getting rid of sorrows: one by living them down, the other by drowning them. The coachman drowned his. He informed her that her luggage”
― Thomas Hardy, Complete Works of Thomas Hardy

“In justice to desponding men, it is as well to remember that the brighter endurance of women at these epochs — invaluable, sweet, angelic, as it is — owes more of its origin to a narrower vision that shuts out many of the leaden-eyed despairs in the van, than to a hopefulness intense enough to quell them.”
― Thomas Hardy, Complete Works of Thomas Hardy

“I am sorry for your disappointment,’ he continued, glancing into her face. Their eyes having met, became, as it were, mutually locked together, and the single instant only which good breeding allows as the length of such a look, became trebled: a clear penetrating ray of intelligence had shot from each into each, giving birth to one of those unaccountable sensations which carry home to the heart before the hand has been touched or the merest compliment passed, by something stronger than mathematical proof, the conviction, ‘A tie has begun to unite us.’ Both faces also unconsciously stated that their owners had been much in each other’s thoughts of late. Owen had talked to the young architect of his sister as freely as to Cytherea of the young architect.”
― Thomas Hardy, Complete Works of Thomas Hardy

“But what is Wisdom really? A steady handling of any means to bring about any end necessary to happiness. Yet whether one’s end be the usual end — a wealthy position in life — or no, the name of wisdom is seldom applied but to the means to that usual end.”
― Thomas Hardy, Complete Works of Thomas Hardy

“Now it is a noticeable fact that we do not much mind what men think of us, or what humiliating secret they discover of our means, parentage, or object, provided that each thinks and acts thereupon in isolation. It is the exchange of ideas about us that we dread most; and the possession by a hundred acquaintances, severally insulated, of the knowledge of our skeleton-closet’s whereabouts, is not so distressing to the nerves as a chat over it by a party of half-a-dozen — exclusive depositaries though these may be.”
― Thomas Hardy, Complete Works of Thomas Hardy

“Of the wickedness of the world he was too forgetful. To discover evil in a new friend is to most people only an additional experience: to him it was ever a surprise.”
― Thomas Hardy, Complete Works of Thomas Hardy

“His had been a love ‘which alters when it alteration finds.”
― Thomas Hardy, The Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)

“In short, he was twenty-eight, and a bachelor.”
― Thomas Hardy, Works of Thomas Hardy. (200+ Works) The Return of the Native, Desperate Remedies, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure & more

“Graye was handsome, frank, and gentle. He had a quality of thought which, exercised on homeliness, was humour; on nature, picturesqueness; on abstractions, poetry. Being, as a rule, broadcast, it was all three. Of the wickedness of the world he was too forgetful. To discover evil in a new friend is to most people only an additional experience: to him it was ever a surprise.”
― Thomas Hardy, Complete Works of Thomas Hardy

“He was a selfish customer, always thinking less of what he was going to do than of what he was going to gain by his doings.”
― Thomas Hardy, The Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)

“In the twilight of the morning light seems active, darkness passive; in the twilight of evening it is the darkness which is active and crescent, and the light which is the drowsy reverse.”
― Thomas Hardy, The Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)

“old”
― Thomas Hardy, The Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)

“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 of 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. She had no fear of the shadows; her sole idea seemed to be to shun mankind — or rather that cold accretion called the world, which, so terrible in the mass, is so unformidable, even pitiable, in its units.”
― Thomas Hardy, Complete Works of Thomas Hardy