Thomas Hardy Quotes
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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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If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst.
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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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Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down you'd treat if met where any bar is, or help to half-a-crown.
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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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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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Indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not.
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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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But his dreams were as gigantic as his surroundings were small.
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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?
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To dwellers in a wood, almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature.
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Silence has sometimes a remarkable power of showing itself as the disembodied soul of feeling wandering without its carcase, and it is then more impressive than speech.
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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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The perfect woman, you see is a working-woman; not an idler; not a fine lady; but one who uses her hands and her head and her heart for the good of others.
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You have never loved me as I love you--never--never! Yours is not a passionate heart--your heart does not burn in a flame! You are, upon the whole, a sort of fay, or sprite-- not a woman!
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Bless thy simplicity, Tess
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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.
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And yet to every bad there is a worse.
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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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A woman would rather visit her own grave than the place where she has been young and beautiful after she is aged and ugly.
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That aspects are within us; and who seems Most kingly is the King.
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That it would always be summer and autumn, and you always courting me, and always thinking as much of me as you have done through the past summertime!
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I have felt lately, more and more, that my present way of living is bad in every respect.
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Women accept their destiny more readily than men.