Thomas Hardy Quotes
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Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
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Nobody had beheld the gravitation of the two into one.
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The offhand decision of some commonplace mind high in office at a critical moment influences the course of events for a hundred years.
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People go on marrying because they can't resist natural forces, although many of them may know perfectly well that they are possibly buying a month's pleasure with a life's discomfort.
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A novel is an impression, not an argument; and there the matter must rest.
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It was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity.
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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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Ladies know what to guard against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks.
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Remember that the best and greatest among mankind are those who do themselves no worldly good. Every successful man is more or less a selfish man. The devoted fail.
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...our impulses are too strong for our judgement sometimes.
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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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I shall do one thing in this life-one thing certain-this is, love you, and long of you, and keep wanting you till I die.
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Because what's the use of learning that I am one of a long row only - finding out that there is set down in some old book somebody just like me, and to know that I shall only act her part; making me sad, that's all. The best is not to remember your nature and your past doings have been just like thousands' and thousands', and that your coming life and doings'll be like thousands' and thousands'.
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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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- the ethereal, fine-nerved, sensitive girl, quite unfitted by temperament and instinct to fulfil the conditions of the matrimonial relation with Phillotson, possibly with scarce any man.
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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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The first cause worked automatically like a somnambulist, and not reflectively like a sage.
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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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You could sometimes see her twelfth year in her cheeks, or her ninth sparkling from her eyes; and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her mouth now and then.
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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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But his dreams were as gigantic as his surroundings were small.
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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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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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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.