Thomas Hardy Quotes
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My wicked heart will ramble on in spite of myself. (Arabella)
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In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving.
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When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often then not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.
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This good fellowship - camaraderie - usually occurring through the similarity of pursuits is unfortunately seldom super-added to love between the sexes, because men and women associate, not in their labors but in their pleasures merely. Where, however, happy circumstances permit its development, the compounded feeling proves itself to be the only love which is strong as death - that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, besides which the passion usually called by the name is as evanescent as steam.
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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.
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I agree to the conditions, Angel; because you know best what my punishment ought to be; only - only - don't make it more than I can bear!
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Women are so strange in their influence that they tempt you to misplaced kindness.
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My weakness has always been to prefer the large intention of an unskilful 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.
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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!
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Tis because we be on a blighted star, and not a sound one, isn't it Tess?
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...our impulses are too strong for our judgement sometimes.
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I may do some good before I am dead--be a sort of success as a frightful example of what not to do; and so illustrate a moral story.
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That man's silence is wonderful to listen to.
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Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.
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You don't talk quite like a girl who has had no advantages.
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Nobody had beheld the gravitation of the two into one.
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It was then that the ecstasy and the dream began, in which emotion was the matter of the universe, and matter but an adventitious intrusion likely to hinder you from spinning where you wanted to spin.
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The social mould civilization fits us into have no more relation to our actual shapes than the conventional shapes of the constellations have to the real star-patterns. I am called Mrs. Richard Phillotson, living a calm wedded life with my counterpart of that name. But I am not really Mrs. Richard Phillotson, but a woman tossed about, all alone, with aberrant passions, and unaccountable antipathies.
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Black chaos comes, and the fettered gods of the earth say, Let there be light.
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The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing alive enough to have strength to die. (from "Neutral Tones")
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Many of her thoughts were perfect syllogisms; unluckily they always remained thoughts. Only a few were irrational assumptions; but, unfortunately, they were the ones which most frequently grew into deeds.
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O, you have torn my life all to pieces... made me be what I prayed you in pity not to make me be again!
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I want to question my belief, so that what is left after I have questioned it, will be even stronger.
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Don't think of what's past!" said she. "I am not going to think outside of now. Why should we! Who knows what tomorrow has in store?