What is it, Angel?" she said, starting up. "Have they come for me?" "Yes, dearest," he said. "They have come." "It is as it should be," she murmured. "Angel, I am almost glad—yes, glad! This happiness could not have lasted. It was too much. I have had enough; and now I shall not live for you to despise me!" She stood up, shook herself, and went forward, neither of the men having moved. "I am ready," she said quietly.
Thomas Hardy
Related Do you think you might be able to love me someday?" He asked and heard her laugh softly. ... JASMINE DUBROFF Because,” he said quietly as she stood up, “until you walked into it, this was an ordinary garde... JUDITH MCNAUGHT You have no idea of what you are doing to me,” he warned. She smiled. “Are you trying to fr... AMANDA QUICK When God Created Mothers" When the Good Lord was creating mothers, He was into His sixth ... ERMA BOMBECK Is it true that you shouted at Professor Umbridge?' 'Yes,' said Harry. 'You ca... J.K. ROWLING I shall report this, and in the meantime the animal can be taken away by one of the porters.’ BETTY NEELS I am no king, and I am no lord, And I am no soldier at-arms," said he. "I'm none but a har... PETER S. BEAGLE Who am I, that you should love me?" "You are My Queen," said Eugenides. She sat perfectly still... MEGAN WHALEN TURNER Are you not thirsty?" said the Lion. "I am dying of thirst," said Jill. "Then drink," said... C.S. LEWIS Damn, damn, damn," she said. "I never said why I like you, and now I have to go." "That's okay,... RAINBOW ROWELL Guilty?” George’s face betrayed his surprise. “Whatever for?” “That neither of... JULIA QUINN Come she saidStay she saidSmile she saidDie she said NâZıM HIKMET Witches are naturally nosy,” said Miss Tick, standing up. “Well, I must go. I hope we shall meet... TERRY PRATCHETT Eena turned aside, breathing shallowly as her mind raced with questions. She was glad he couldn’t ... RICHELLE E. GOODRICH Do you know what they call themselves, all these people?" Alyss shook her head. How could she ... FRANK BEDDOR Nina Zenik, as soon as I figure out where you've put my knives, we're going to have words." LEIGH BARDUGO When last I checked, you were a sorcerer, not a Jedi." "You've seen Star Wars?" "Seen it a... KATE GRIFFIN Are you all right, Robin?' 'Yes, I promise I am.' She hesitated, then said, almost defian... ROBERT GALBRAITH I have something to tell you." "How, you have something to tell me?" "You have... STEVEN BRUST Basch: So why don't you ask her out? The Runt: I'm scared she wouldn't like me and say no... SAMUEL SHEM The Olinka girls do not believe girls should be educated. When I asked a mother why she thought this... ALICE WALKER Astrid found the hem of his T-shirt and pulled it up over his head. She unbuckled his belt and shove... MICHAEL GRANT How would you like it if I said to you, 'It kills me to say this, but you're actually a tiny bit bea... MELINA MARCHETTA What did she say to you?" "Nothing." "Oh, great. I have to try to get you out of this mess... MELINA MARCHETTA She reached out and touched the bright colors of the cashmere scarf, her face filled with wonder as ... RICHELLE MEAD she is no longer the beautiful woman she was. she sends photos of herself sittin... CHARLES BUKOWSKI She went on, “Yes, Porter and I did discuss divorce, and we realized we loved each other too much ... JOSH LANYON The poet dreams of the classroom I dreamed I stood up in class And I said aloud... MARY OLIVER Why are you being so nice to me?' I asked her. 'You know,' she said, 'when you say stuff like t... SARAH DESSEN The girl in the tight black dress was passing by us now, eyeing Wes and walking entirely too slowly.... SARAH DESSEN She could not think what it would be to teach school twelve miles away from home, along among strang... LAURA INGALLS WILDER It was not the thought that I was so unloved that froze me. I had taught myself to do without love.<... KURT VONNEGUT JR. So what's your doll's name?" Boo asked me. "Barbie," I said. "All their names are Barbie." SARAH DESSEN AHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!' he screamed. 'So that's Sara,' I said. 'Yes.' 'She seems nice. JOHN GREEN This is what it's all been about with you," he said in an even tone. "All the fear, all the run... KRESLEY COLE He stared at me. "She liked you, boy." The intensity of his voice and eyes made me blink. "Yes,... JERRY SPINELLI I have something for you.” “Yeah? What? Is it shiny?” They both waited until Indigo ... NALINI SINGH I'd love to, she finally said,"on one condition." I steadied myself, hoping it wasn't something... NICHOLAS SPARKS Honestly," I said. What?" Come on. You have to admit it's sort of ridiculous." What i... SARAH DESSEN Charley talking to Cookie ‘'You know those women in nursing homes that have to be restrained... DARYNDA JONES Unamused, Ushara went to pull the kettle from the stove and pour the tea. “That’s beside the poi... SHERRILYN KENYON Mom." I couldn't believe she was doing this again. She was taking this moment, this time when I was ... SARAH DESSEN I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness. All seems bea... WALT WHITMAN You could be David's friend too". She glanced at Tamani when he said nothing. He was frowning. "The ... APRILYNNE PIKE It was two weeks after the day she turned eighteen All dressed in white Going to the churc... CARRIE UNDERWOOD You're a rule person," he said. "My sister was a cheater. It sort of became necessary." "S... SARAH DESSEN But now she could not bear the way she sounded. She was not a person anyone could love. .... PETER CAREY I am Detective Inspector Me. This is my partner, Detective Her." The traffic warden frowned. "H... DEREK LANDY I’ll come back,” she promised. “I’ll always come back to you.” “I know,” he said ... TIFFANY REISZ Let's look for dragons, I said to Pooh. Yes, let's, said Pooh to Me. We crossed the rive... A.A. MILNE I didn't want it to be this way." "Yes, you did," she said, "because it is." "I just want... CANDACE BUSHNELL Where have you been?" she cried. "Damn you, where have you been?" She took a few steps toward Schmen... PETER S. BEAGLE Why don’t you purchase an Italian dictionary? I will assume the expense.” “I have one,”... JULIA QUINN Suddenly Saffron had a picture in her mind of Sarah waiting at the bottom of the wall, and she was a... HILARY MCKAY You know," Marion said, "I met a woman once when I was a teenager. I knew she had gone through a lot... ERICA BAUERMEISTER I wouldn't have been sent back to help you," Tristan continued. "I wouldn't have been made an angel ... ELIZABETH CHANDLER It was a face which darkness could kill in an instant a face as easily hurt ... LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI May she wake in torment!’ [...] ‘Why, she’s a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there - ... EMILY BRONTë I told you everything I know", said the messenger. Arin had gone to his childhood suite, feeling anx... MARIE RUTKOSKI She's going to do nothing but try to trick information out of me that I shouldn't be giving her, Mac... JIM BUTCHER Proctor: I am only wondering how I may prove what she told me, Elizabeth. If the girl's a saint now,... ARTHUR MILLER I want to have the heart and mind of a queen,” she whispered. “I want it more than anything. But... KRISTIN CASHORE How old are you?” she asked. My answer was automatic and ingrained. “Seventeen.” “... STEPHENIE MEYER You should read something else." Why would he have done that to him?" I don't know," she s... NICHOLAS SPARKS Katherine," he said. He was still smiling. "Yes." She leaned closer. "Katherine..." "... L.J. SMITH When, some months later, Zoltan emailed me about his decision to run for president, I immediately ca... MARK O'CONNELL Lula," I said, "do you ever think about getting married?" I guess I do. Doesn't everybody?" JACQUELINE KELLY Did you look up 'incubus'?" Ren asked, in her ear. She heard a smile in his voice. "Yes. ... MOLLY RINGLE Why do you do up your hair in those tortured plaits, now, Melanie? Why? Because, she said. ANGELA CARTER I’m sure you despise me,” she sobbed, looking up at him through tearful eyes. “Desp... DAN BROWN Auri hopped down from the chimney and skipped over to where I stood, her hair streaming behind her. ... PATRICK ROTHFUSS For all his determination to keep her at arm's length, they had literally leaned on each other. He c... ROBERT GALBRAITH There was a few seconds' pause. Then Amit said: I meant, what were you thinking just now. VIKRAM SETH Thank you,” she whispered, sending up a quick prayer for his continued recovery. “You’re ... JULIA QUINN You are real," she said to herself. "Aye." His voice was deep and resonant, a caress in h... J.R. WARD Can I ask you something?" you said. "How did you ever survive that scandal?" She said, "I... GABRIELLE ZEVIN O Deep Thought computer," he said, "the task we have designed you to perform is this. We want you to... DOUGLAS ADAMS Damn it. What are we exactly calling a 'masculine problem'? Did he have trouble running the flag up?... LISA KLEYPAS So, having found a lady, could you not have come to her aid, or left her alone? Why drag her into yo... NEIL GAIMAN Cheshire Puss,' she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name... LEWIS CARROLL It's going to be okay," Park said. She nodded. "Right." "Because I love you."<... RAINBOW ROWELL ...And where's Margaret Pier? I know she's not dead, even if she's almost as old as I am and ... HELEN HUDSON I should go," I said thickly. "Let me know when you want to start practice again. And thanks for...t... RICHELLE MEAD You’ll have sweet dreams?” he asked quietly and sounding like he cared, a lot. God b... KRISTEN ASHLEY You tried to kill me. Don't think we won't be telling that story to our kids someday," David said. DEBBIE VIGUIé I don’t want any money.” I put the wallet away. She said: “What are you going to do ... JONATHAN LATIMER Daniel, he said. I would have you follow me. Master!....I will fight for you to the end!.... ELIZABETH GEORGE SPEARE I hate you.' My sister said it different than she said it to my dad. She meant it with me. She ... STEPHEN CHBOSKY Have a seat with me,” Caine said, hopping down from the wall. “How have you been, Taylor?” MICHAEL GRANT Irene gasped. "Have you taken leave of your senses, Stuart?" she hissed. "Have you?" Stuart clo... ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH Right," Chaol said. "So you're just...memorizing that information now?" "If you're sugges... SARAH J. MAAS Nothing before you counts," he said. "And I can't even imagine an after." She shook her ... RAINBOW ROWELL What does Éloa mean?” He narrowed his gaze, answered her literally. “It’s the name... SARAH MACLEAN When I said yes, i will When I said no, I don't When I said I have, I give When I s... SAMINU KANTI She came towards me with a juicy gash between her legs that smelled like my best friend's sister" DAVE MATTHES Sounds like that happens to you a lot. Bet your girlfriend wasn't thrilled, though." She wasn't sure... MELISSA DE LA CRUZ Now he felt temper snapping at the nerves. “If you can’t be comfortable in the house while I’m... J.D. ROBB For Lucie," Peter said quietly, the flame of a gilded saint's candle fluttering in his hand." "... SARAH BLAKLEY-CARTWRIGHT I couldn't get through this last book." "He didn't even just skip ahead to read the sex s... KELLEY ARMSTRONG I have been waiting for you for so long.” I pointed to the car. “We are searching for Trach... JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
More Thomas Hardy
The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never ... THOMAS HARDY There is a condition worse than blindness, and that is, seeing something that isn't there. THOMAS HARDY A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. Circumspection and devotion are a contradiction in ... THOMAS HARDY Patience, that blending of moral courage with physical timidity. THOMAS HARDY Tess's feminine hope - shall we confess it - had been so obstinately recuperative as to revive in he... THOMAS HARDY I won't be a slave to the past. I'll love where I choose. THOMAS HARDY A strong woman who recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never... THOMAS HARDY At first I did not love you, Jude; that I own. When I first knew you I merely wanted you to love me.... THOMAS HARDY Sometimes a woman's love of being loved gets the better of her conscience, and though she is agonize... THOMAS HARDY People go on marrying because they can't resist natural forces, although many of them may know perfe... THOMAS HARDY Pessimism is, in brief, playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only v... THOMAS HARDY There was no exaggeration in Marian's definition of Flintcomb-Ash farm as a starve-acre place. The s... THOMAS HARDY If way to the better there be, it exacts a full look at the worst. THOMAS HARDY Some folk want their luck buttered. THOMAS HARDY It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to expre... THOMAS HARDY Dialect words are those terrible marks of the beast to the truly genteel. THOMAS HARDY Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired... THOMAS HARDY The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him. THOMAS HARDY If all hearts were open and all desires known -- as they would be if people showed their souls -- ho... THOMAS HARDY Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change. THOMAS HARDY Ethelberta breathed a sort of exclamation, not right out, but stealthily, like a parson's damn. THOMAS HARDY Let me enjoy the earth no less Because the all-enacting Might That fashioned forth its loveli... THOMAS HARDY Once victim, always victim -- that's the law! THOMAS HARDY Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honor as deserving real distinction... THOMAS HARDY I am the family face; flesh perishes, I live on, projecting trait and trace through time to times an... THOMAS HARDY Well: what we gain by science is, after all, sadness, as the Preacher saith. The more we know of the... THOMAS HARDY Aspect are within us, and who seems most kingly is king. THOMAS HARDY Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them. THOMAS HARDY Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle. THOMAS HARDY Don't you go believing in sayings, Picotee: they are all made by men, for their own advantages. Wome... THOMAS HARDY Man, without religion, is the creature of circumstances. THOMAS HARDY A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance... THOMAS HARDY That man's silence is wonderful to listen to. THOMAS HARDY There is a condition worse than blindness, and that is, seeing something that isn't there. THOMAS HARDY If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone. THOMAS HARDY A lover without discretion is no lover at all. THOMAS HARDY ...our impulses are too strong for our judgement sometimes THOMAS HARDY Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened. THOMAS HARDY If an offense come out of the truth, better is it that the offense come than that the truth be conce... THOMAS HARDY There are accents in the eye which are not on the tongue, and more tales come from pale lips than ca... THOMAS HARDY A woman would rather visit her own grave than the place where she has been young and beautiful after... THOMAS HARDY Eustacia Vye was the raw material of a divinity. On Olympus she would have done well with a little p... THOMAS HARDY In making even horizontal and clear inspections we colour and mould according to the wants within us... THOMAS HARDY The resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidan... THOMAS HARDY You can do anything with bayonets except sit on them. THOMAS HARDY If all hearts were open and all desires known -- as they would be if people showed their souls -- ... THOMAS HARDY Some women's love of being loved is insatiable; and so, often, is their love of loving; and in the l... THOMAS HARDY You simply mean that you flirted outrageously with him, poor old chap, and then repented, and to mak... THOMAS HARDY To dwellers in a wood, almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. THOMAS HARDY But you shouldn't have let her. That's the only way with these fanciful women that chaw high--innoce... THOMAS HARDY You don't talk quite like a girl who has had no advantages. THOMAS HARDY I hate to be what is called a clever girl—there are too many of that sort now! THOMAS HARDY Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honour as deserving real distincti... THOMAS HARDY A lover without discretion is no lover at all. THOMAS HARDY Pessimism is, in brief, playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only... THOMAS HARDY A man's silence is wonderful to listen to. THOMAS HARDY Fear is the mother of foresight. THOMAS HARDY Happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain. THOMAS HARDY The value of old age depends upon the person who reaches it. To some men of early performance it is ... THOMAS HARDY Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn, We should have sat us down to wet Right many ... THOMAS HARDY I shall be breakfasted before you are afield. In short, I shall astonish you all. THOMAS HARDY Let me enjoy the earth no less because the all-enacting light that fashioned forth its loveliness ha... THOMAS HARDY There's not a modest maiden elf / But dreads the final Trumpet, / Lest half of her should rise herse... THOMAS HARDY I was court-martial in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot ... THOMAS HARDY Silent? ah, he is silent! He can keep silence well. That man's silence is wonderful to listen to. THOMAS HARDY The excessive regard of parents for their children, and their dislike of other people's is, like cla... THOMAS HARDY Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change THOMAS HARDY The bower we shrined to Tennyson, / Gentlemen, / Is roof-wrecked; damps there drip upon / Sagged sea... THOMAS HARDY To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world east... THOMAS HARDY It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and tha... THOMAS HARDY I have been looking for god for fifty years and I think if he had existed I should have discovered h... THOMAS HARDY Give the enemy not only a road for flight, but also a means of defending it. THOMAS HARDY Where once we danced, where once we sang, Gentlemen, / The floors are shrunken, cobwebs hang. THOMAS HARDY Cruelty is the law pervading all nature and society; and we can't get out of it if we would THOMAS HARDY The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him THOMAS HARDY 'Peace upon earth!' was said. We sing it, / And pay a million priests to bring it. / After two thous... THOMAS HARDY The resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidan... THOMAS HARDY I am the family face; / Flesh perishes, I live on, / Projecting trait and trace / Through time to ti... THOMAS HARDY Patience, that blending of moral courage with physical timidity THOMAS HARDY I need not go / Through sleet and snow / To where I know / She waits for me: / She will tarry there ... THOMAS HARDY A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. THOMAS HARDY Try to learn something about everything and everything about something. THOMAS HARDY The sky was clear -- remarkably clear -- and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs ... THOMAS HARDY This was a practical application of the principle that a half-feigned and fictitious faith is better... THOMAS HARDY We learn that it is not the rays which bodies absorb, but those which they reject, that give them th... THOMAS HARDY The rarest offerings of the purest loves are but a self-indulgence, and no generosity at all. THOMAS HARDY Silence has sometimes a remarkable power of showing itself as the disembodied soul of feeling wander... THOMAS HARDY Human shapes, interferences, troubles, and joys were all as if they were not, and there seemed to be... THOMAS HARDY He was moderately truthful towards men, but to women lied like a Cretan-a system of ethics above all... THOMAS HARDY I may do some good before I am dead--be a sort of success as a frightful example of what not to do; ... THOMAS HARDY There are disappointments which wring us, and there are those which inflict a wound whose mark we be... THOMAS HARDY Did it never strike your mind that what every woman says, some women may feel? THOMAS HARDY This good fellowship - camaraderie - usually occurring through the similarity of pursuits is unfortu... THOMAS HARDY Women are never tired of bewailing man’s fickleness in love, but they only seem to snub his consta... THOMAS HARDY So each had a private little sun for her soul to bask in; some dream, some affection, some hobby, or... THOMAS HARDY Let truth be told - women do as a rule live through such humiliations, and regain their spirits, and... THOMAS HARDY You, and those like you, take your fill of pleasure on earth by making the life of such as me bitter... THOMAS HARDY Don't think of what's past!" said she. "I am not going to think outside of now. Why should we! Who k... THOMAS HARDY Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness. THOMAS HARDY And at home by the fire, whenever you look up there I shall be— and whenever I look up, there will... THOMAS HARDY --the ethereal, fine-nerved, sensitive girl, quite unfitted by temperament and instinct to fulfil th... THOMAS HARDY Everybody must be managed. Queens must be managed. Kings must be managed, for men want managing almo... THOMAS HARDY Like all people who have known rough times, light-heartedness seemed to her too irrational and incon... THOMAS HARDY She seemed to be occupied with of inner chamber of ideas and to have slight need for visible objects... THOMAS HARDY ...who remained as fixed in the arm-chair as if she had been melted into it when in a liquid state, ... THOMAS HARDY Her suspense was terrible. THOMAS HARDY If she had not been imprudence incarnate, she would not have acted as she did when she met Henchard ... THOMAS HARDY Yet her experience had consisted less in a series of pure disappointments than in a series of substi... THOMAS HARDY The curious double strands in Farfrae's thread of life - the commercial and the romantic - were very... THOMAS HARDY With peace of mind came development, and with development beauty. Knowledge—the result of great na... THOMAS HARDY Fancies find room in the strongest minds. Here, in a churchyard old as civilization, in the worst of... THOMAS HARDY And all this while the subtle-souled girl asking herself why she was born, why sitting in a room, an... THOMAS HARDY Though when at home their countenances varied with the seasons, their market faces all the year roun... THOMAS HARDY There are men whose hearts insist upon a dogged fidelity to some image or cause thrown by chance int... THOMAS HARDY He was like one who had half fainted, and could neither recover nor complete the swoon. THOMAS HARDY The Scotchman seemed hardly the same Farfrae who had danced with her, and walked with her, in a deli... THOMAS HARDY The pain she experienced from the almost absolute obliviousness to her existence that was shown by t... THOMAS HARDY If ever tears and pleadings have served the weak to fight the strong, let them do so now! THOMAS HARDY He was to them like the poet of a new school who takes his contemporaries by storm; who is not reall... THOMAS HARDY The man was of fine figure, swarthy, and stern in aspect; and he showed in profile a facial angle so... THOMAS HARDY Fundamental belief consoled him for superficial irony. THOMAS HARDY It was part of his nature to extenuate nothing and live on as one of his own worst accusers. THOMAS HARDY Finding this, she was much perplexed as to Henchard's motives in opening the matter at all; for in s... THOMAS HARDY Life is an oasis which is submerged in the swirling waves of sorrows and agonies. THOMAS HARDY She had been too early habituated to anxious reasoning to drop the habit suddenly. THOMAS HARDY Her companion, also in black, appeared as a well-formed young woman about 18, completely possessed o... THOMAS HARDY She had the hard, half-apathetic expression of one who deems anything possible at the hands of time ... THOMAS HARDY Her experience had been of a kind to teach her, rightly or wrongly, that the doubtful honor of a bri... THOMAS HARDY She had learned the lesson of renunciation and was as familiar with the wreck of each day's wishes a... THOMAS HARDY Some folks want their luck buttered. THOMAS HARDY In considering what Tess was not, he overlooked that she was, and forgot that the defective can more... THOMAS HARDY Men thin away to insignificance and oblivion quite as often by not making the most of good spirits w... THOMAS HARDY Then if children make so much trouble, why do people have 'em? THOMAS HARDY You would hardly think, at first, that horrid monsters lie up there waiting to be discovered by any ... THOMAS HARDY He's charmed by her as if she were some fairy!" continued Arabella. "See how he looks round at her, ... THOMAS HARDY It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in a language which is chiefly made by men to exp... THOMAS HARDY Rural solitude, which provides ample themes for the intellect and sweet occupations innumerable for ... THOMAS HARDY There's a friendly tie of some sort between music and eating. THOMAS HARDY If we be doomed to marry, we marry; if we be doomed to remain single we do. THOMAS HARDY Christmas Eve Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. "Now they are all on their knees," An elder... THOMAS HARDY War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading. THOMAS HARDY There is always an inertia to be overcome in striking out a new line of conduct -- not more in ourse... THOMAS HARDY No one can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure. THOMAS HARDY So little cause for carolings / Of such ecstatic sound / Was written on terrestrial things / Afar or... THOMAS HARDY Rays from the sunrise drew forth the buds and stretched them into long stalks, lifted up sap in nois... THOMAS HARDY So zestfully canst thou sing? / And all this indignity, / With God's consent, on thee! / Blinded ere... THOMAS HARDY Perhaps you are making a cat's paw of me with Phillotson all this time. Upon my word it almost seems... THOMAS HARDY They spoke very little of their mutual feeling; pretty phrases and warm expressions being probably u... THOMAS HARDY It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and tha... THOMAS HARDY But there were certain early days in Casterbridge- days of firmamental exhaustion which followed ang... THOMAS HARDY I have sometimes thought--that under the affectation of independent views you are as enslaved to the... THOMAS HARDY It takes two or three generations to do what I tried to do in one; and my impulses--affections--vice... THOMAS HARDY I have no fear of men, as such, nor of their books. I have mixed with them--one or two of them parti... THOMAS HARDY The people who had turned their heads turned them again as the service proceeded; and at last observ... THOMAS HARDY Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as... THOMAS HARDY Meanwhile, the trees were just as green as before; the birds sang and the sun shone as clearly now a... THOMAS HARDY That it would always be summer and autumn, and you always courting me, and always thinking as much o... THOMAS HARDY ...she moved about in a mental cloud of many-coloured idealities, which eclipsed all sinister contin... THOMAS HARDY Tis because we be on a blighted star, and not a sound one, isn't it Tess? THOMAS HARDY She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but hersel... THOMAS HARDY Never in her life – she could swear it from the bottom of her soul – had she ever intended to do... THOMAS HARDY Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. THOMAS HARDY Do you know that I have undergone three quarters of this labour entirely for the sake of the fourth ... THOMAS HARDY In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, th... THOMAS HARDY How very lovable her face was to him. Yet there was nothing ethereal about it; all was real vitality... THOMAS HARDY Her affection for him was now the breath and life of Tess's being; it enveloped her as a photosphere... THOMAS HARDY Sometimes I feel I don't want to know anything more about [history] than I know already. [...] Becau... THOMAS HARDY I agree to the conditions, Angel; because you know best what my punishment ought to be; only - only ... THOMAS HARDY My eyes were dazed by you for a little, and that was all. THOMAS HARDY This hobble of being alive is rather serious, don’t you think so? THOMAS HARDY The beauty or ugliness of a character lay not only in its achievements, but in its aims and impulses... THOMAS HARDY Ladies know what to guard against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks… THOMAS HARDY Why didn’t you tell me there was danger? Why didn’t you warn me? Ladies know what to guard again... THOMAS HARDY Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?" "Yes." "All like ours?" "I don't know, but ... THOMAS HARDY Beauty lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized. THOMAS HARDY A novel is an impression, not an argument; and there the matter must rest. THOMAS HARDY You overrate my capacity of love. I don't posess half the warmth of nature you believe me to have. A... THOMAS HARDY ...it is foreign to a man's nature to go on loving a person when he is told that he must and shall b... THOMAS HARDY The purpose of a chronicler of moods and deeds does not require him to express his personal views up... THOMAS HARDY My weakness has always been to prefer the large intention of an unskilful artist to the trivial inte... THOMAS HARDY you dear, sweet, tantalizing phantom--hardly flesh at all; so that when I put my arms round you I al... THOMAS HARDY Had other aims than my delight. THOMAS HARDY Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons. THOMAS HARDY Indeed, he seemed to approach the grave as a hyperbolic curve approaches a straight line -- less dir... THOMAS HARDY Many besides Angel have learnt that the magnitude of lives is not as to their external displacements... THOMAS HARDY On a Fine Morning” in Poems of the Past and the Present (1901) WHENCE comes Solac... THOMAS HARDY The sky was clear - remarkably clear - and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of... THOMAS HARDY Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down you'd treat if met where any bar is, or ... THOMAS HARDY She had not heard him enter, and hardly realized his presence there. She was yawning, and he saw the... THOMAS HARDY The beggarly question of parentage--what is it, after all? What does it matter, when you come to thi... THOMAS HARDY My argument is that War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading. THOMAS HARDY He had just reached the time of life at which 'young' is ceasing to be the prefix of 'man' in speaki... THOMAS HARDY But no one came. Because no one ever does. THOMAS HARDY My opinion is that a poet should express the emotion of all the ages and the thought of his own. THOMAS HARDY The offhand decision of some commonplace mind high in office at a critical moment influences the cou... THOMAS HARDY And yet to every bad there is a worse. THOMAS HARDY That man's silence is wonderful to listen to. THOMAS HARDY Love, though added emotion, is substracted capacity THOMAS HARDY Bathsheba loved Troy in the way that only self-reliant women love when they abandon their self-relia... THOMAS HARDY The atmosphere beneath is languorous, and is so tinged with azure that what artists call the middle ... THOMAS HARDY