Far From the Madding Crowd Quotes

“I wish I could say courteous flatteries to you,” the farmer continued in an easier tone, “and put my rugged feeling into a graceful shape: but I have neither power nor patience to learn such things. I want you for my wife—so wildly that no other feeling can abide in me; but I should not have spoken out had I not been led to hope.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

“You know, mistress, that I love you, and shall love you always. I only mention this to bring to your mind that at any rate I would wish to do you no harm: beyond that I put it aside. I have lost in the race for money and good things, and I am not such a fool as to pretend to 'ee now I am poor, and you have got altogether above me. But Bathsheba, dear mistress, this I beg you to consider -- that, both to keep yourself well honoured among the workfolk, and in common generosity to an honourable man who loves you as well as I, you should be more discreet in your bearing towards this soldier.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“On a day which had a summer face and a winter constitution—a fine January morning,”
― Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

“The rarest offerings of the purest loves are but a self indulgence, and no generosity at all.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Well, what I mean is that I shouldn’t mind being a bride at a wedding, if I could be one without having a husband. But since a woman can’t show off in that way by herself, i shan’t marry — at least yet.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“The only half of the sun yet visible burnt incandescent and rayless, like a clear and flameless fire shining over a white hearthstone. The whole scene resembled a sunset as childhood resembles age.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Men are such constant fools!”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“It may have been observed that there is no regular path for getting out of love as there is for getting in.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“As without law there is no sin, without eyes there is no indecorum.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“In reprinting this story for a new edition I am reminded that it was in the chapters of “Far from the Madding Crowd” as they appeared month by month in a popular magazine, that I first ventured to adopt the word “Wessex” from the pages of early English history, and give it a fictitious significance as the existing name of the district once included in that extinct kingdom.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Half the pleasure of a feeling lies in being able to express it on the spur of the moment, and I let out mine.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“É uma moça muito bonita”, disse ele a Oak. “Mas tem seus defeitos”, comentou Gabriel. “É verdade, fazendeiro.”
“E o maior deles é — bem, o de sempre.” “Regatear? Sim, é mesmo.”
“Ah, não.”
“O que é, então?”

Gabriel, talvez um pouco ressentido pela indiferença da viajante, olhou para onde havia testemunhado a atuação dela pela cerca e disse:
“Vaidade.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Estava no período mais brilhante do crescimento masculino, com seus intelectos e emoções claramente separadas. O tempo no qual a influência da juventude indiscriminadamente se misturava à impulsividade havia passado, e ainda não havia chegado à fase em que elas se uniam novamente, pela ingerência de uma esposa ou da família. Resumindo, estava com vinte e oito anos e solteiro.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“It is better to accept any chance that offers itself, and then extemporise a procedure to fit it, than to get a good plan matured, and wait for a chance of using it.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Like exceptional emphasis in the tone of a genius, that which would have made mediocrity ridiculous was an addition to recognised power.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

“looking-glasses for the pretty, and lying books for the wicked.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“the voice was unexpectedly attractive...common in descriptions, rare in experince.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“...a little calf, about a day old, looking idiotically at the two women, which showed that it had not long been accustomed to the phenomenon of eyesight, and often turning to the lantern, which it mistook for the moon, inherited instinct having as yet had little time for correction by experience.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Fitness being the basis of beauty, nobody could have denied that his steady swings and turns in and about the flock had elements of grace...”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“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. The North Star was directly in the winds eye, and since evening the Bear had swung round it outwardly to the east, till he was now at a right angle with the meridian. A difference of colour in the stars - oftener read of than seen in England - was really perceptible here. The sovereign brilliancy of Sirius pierced the eye with a steely glitter, the star called Capella was yellow, Aldebaran and Betelgueux shone with a fiery red.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“I cannot allow any man to—to criticize my private conduct!’ she exclaimed. ‘Nor will I for a minute.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

“Well, what I mean is that I shouldn’t mind being a bride at a wedding, if I could be one without having a husband.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

“up her face to argue a point with a tall man, suggested that there was potentiality enough in that lithe slip of humanity for alarming exploits of sex, and daring enough to carry them out. But”
― Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

“The insulation of his heart by reserve during these many years, without a channel of any kind for disposable emotion, had worked its effect. It has been observed more than once that the causes of love are chiefly subjective, and Boldwood was a living testimony to the truth of the proposition. No mother existed to absorb his devotion, no sister for his tenderness, no idle ties for sense. He became surcharged with the compound, which was genuine lover’s love.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“I see your face in every scene of my dreams, and hear your voice in
every sound. I wish I did not. It is too much what I feel. They say
such love never lasts. But it must! And yet once, I remember, I saw an
officer of the Hussars ride down the street at Budmouth, and though he
was a total stranger and never spoke to me, I loved him till I thought
I should really die of love--but I didn't die, and at last I left off
caring for him. How terrible it would be if a time should come when I
could not love you, my Clym!”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“-Én csak egyvalamit fogok tenni ebben az életben... de azt biztosan... szeretni magát, vágyakozni maga után, akarni magát, míg meg nem halok.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

“Her original vigorous pride of youth had sickened, and with it had declined all her anxieties about coming years, since anxiety recognizes a better and a worse alternative, and Bathsheba had made up her mind that alternatives on any noteworthy scale had ceased for her.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

“However, it is so sometimes, and nothing happens that we expect," he added, with the repose of a man whom misfortune had inured rather than subdued.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

“she, like all others, had moments of commonplace, when to be least plainly seen was to be most prettily remembered”
― Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

“Being a man not without a frequent consciousness that there was some charm in this life he led, he stood still after looking at the sky as a useful instrument, and regarded it in an appreciative spirit, as a work of art superlatively beautiful. For a moment, he seemed impressed with the speaking loneliness of the scene, or rather with the complete abstraction from all its compass of the sights and sounds of man. Human shapes, interferences, troubles, and joys were all as if they were not,”
― Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd