Yet her experience had consisted less in a series of pure disappointments than in a series of substitutions. Continually it had happened that what she had desired had not been granted her, and that what had been granted her she had not desired. So she viewed with an approach to equanimity the now cancelled days when Donald had been her undeclared lover, and wondered what unwished-for thing Heaven might send her in place of him.
Thomas Hardy
Related As she had been walking from the ward to that room, she had felt such pure hatred that now she had n... PAULO COELHO She had grown older. And he loved her more now than he had loved her when he understood her better, ... MICHAEL ONDAATJE When she transformed into a butterfly, the caterpillars spoke not of her beauty, but of her weirdnes... DEAN JACKSON There had been a time in Godfrey's life when, had she stood before him in all her splendor, he would... GEORGE MACDONALD She loved him because he had brought her back to life. She had been like a caterpillar in a cocoon, ... KEN FOLLETT No matter what, the day didn't feel like Christmas to her. She remembered years ago, when... KAYLA KRANTZ She looked like she had been beaten up, bruised. She had bruises all over her face, her tongue had b... BERNADETTE MCELROY She left feeling dirty, and on the bus ride home she knew that what her uncles told her had come tru... DAVID BERGEN They were talking more distantly than if they were strangers who had just met, for if they had been ... W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM She wondered whether there would ever come an hour in her life when she didn't think of him -- didn'... PHILIP PULLMAN Before her marriage she had thought that she had love within her grasp; but since the happiness whic... GUSTAVE FLAUBERT When it was over, she gathered him in her arms. And told him the terrible irony of her life. Th... MELINA MARCHETTA He had had to be father and mother to her, and he had taken to his tasks with determination, seeking... PAULA BRACKSTON She knew, then, that it had not been hatred that had made him avoid her for so long. No, it had not ... L.J. SMITH When had being an addict gotten so fucking hard? So exhausting? It had been so easy for so long; she... STACIA KANE Now very much against her will, she thought of the way Jace had looked at her then, the blaze of fai... CASSANDRA CLARE Listening to Leonard, Madeleine felt impoverished by her happy childhood. She never wondered why she... JEFFREY EUGENIDES A lengthy and painful discussion followed. It lasted through tea and dinner. It was revealed to Lady... KAGE BAKER Her thoughts ran away to her girlhood with its passionate longing for adventure and she remembered t... SHERWOOD ANDERSON He had no doubt that Merrin had called out to God here in this place while she was been raped and ki... JOE HILL Anna had been preparing herself for this meeting, had thought what she would say to him, but she did... LEO TOLSTOY She had a very difficult life. Her mother gave her away when she was little, and the man who took he... BERNARDO BATIZ Her family had of late been exceedingly fluctuating. For many years of her life she had had two sons... JANE AUSTEN Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had... LEO TOLSTOY Annie, who up until this very day had always felt like a child--which is why she could not marry, sh... ELIZABETH STROUT It had been too much for Edith to take and she had gone to her room so that her nieces wouldn't see ... ANNA GODBERSEN So what if she wasn’t a pushover? So what if she had some mettle and didn’t wear her heart on he... SARA SHERIDAN He had appeared beside her because she had wanted him to. She had called him to her, and was calling... ALICE HOFFMAN She couldn’t walk away from him again. Her heart couldn’t take it and she didn’t think his cou... KATIE REUS Never in her life – she could swear it from the bottom of her soul – had she ever intended to do... THOMAS HARDY Those who had seen eyes like hers before understood instantly that she was a woman who had suffered,... DANIELLE STEEL She didn’t understand why it was happening,” he said. “I had to tell her she would die. Her so... JOHN GREEN She had had no idea what it would do to her seeing him in a suit. ANNA GODBERSEN Sissy had two great failings. She was a great lover and a great mother. She had so much of tendernes... BETTY SMITH Midland City had a goddess of discord all its own. This was a goddess who could not dance, would not... KURT VONNEGUT What was this power, this insidious threat, this invisible gun to her head that controlled her life ... FANNIE FLAGG For most of her life she just expected things would work out, that people would be kind. Now she rec... STEWART O'NAN She was in fear for her life, ... She had been told many times if she left him, harm would come to (... CHIEF JOSEPH A twinge of fear entered Gwenwhyfar’s heart. It was the first she had heard of the sea farms lying... JENNIFER MCKEITHEN She suddenly understood why she had let him kiss her in the diner, why she had wanted him at all. HOLLY BLACK Watching her mother’s decline had been slow and painful: the worst thing she had ever had to witne... VICTORIA JENKINS Even in that short time he had seen that Anne had great power. She did not care if she quarreled wit... PHILIPPA GREGORY She was about forty: In her youth She had been a Beauty; But her charms had been upon that large sca... MATTHEW LEWIS She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say "when". P.G. WODEHOUSE She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say "when." P. G. WODEHOUSE He had been violently confused by her real presence in the opposite inaccessible corner. For months ... A.S. BYATT She plays with her emotions on her sleeve, she's going to yell every once in a while. But her being ... MARQUETTE BURGESS It was as bad as the summer that her mother had taken the training wheels off Coraline's bicycle;but... NEIL GAIMAN He wondered how it could have taken him so long to realize he cared for her, and he told her so, and... NEIL GAIMAN Nothing today had done her any real harm, yet she felt as though her nerves had been flayed and left... MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL Florence could feel a constriction in her chest…She had been foolish enough to hope that whatever ... SANA KRASIKOV Florence could feel a constriction in her chest…She had been foolish enough to hope that whatever ... SANA KRASIKOV She had been beaten unconscious. She was covered in blood. She had this cord wrapped around her neck... GRAHAM THORPE At some point, she didn't know when or for how long, she found herself lost, lost in a song. Her eye... JAMES MORRIS Alex understood such discipline. He knew the rarity of it, and the cost. And on the rare occasions w... MEREDITH DURAN With stars in her eyes and veils in her hair, with cyclamen and wild violets—what nonsense was he ... VIRGINIA WOOLF The strange thing; her face, after she hit me. She was in greater pain than I. You could see it in h... JODI PICOULT In her misery she read a great deal, and discovered that she had lost something she had previously n... ROBERT MUSIL I could tell from Anna's face that she had already told him about dancing in Saint Petersburg and th... COLUM MCCANN ...this refinement and delicacy were what Cale adored; but Cale had been beaten into shape, hammered... PAUL HOFFMAN She came here to change her life, to get her daughter back -- that was what was real and pure in her... ANDREW LLOYD When Mom had her first nervous breakdown, she said she had a vision of Christ coming to her in the l... SPALDING GRAY Fairy tales had been her first experience of the magical universe, and more than once she had wonder... PAULO COELHO But she let herself think of Jay. And of the kiss. And suddenly the damp chill that had been clingin... KIMBERLY DERTING Lucy seemed to be imprisoned by a legion of people in her life who always wanted what was right for ... C. JOYBELL C. She had been dying so long that I had almost come to regard her as immortal. THOMAS NELSON PAGE But Lucy had been alone too much of her life, and in her loneliness she had constructed a vision of ... ANN PATCHETT She kicked almost the entire time she had her shoulder problem, so her underwater is amazing. She's ... ARRIKA BALES The feeling that she had never really lived in this world caught her by surprise. It was a fact. She... HAN KANG Royce understood then why she had come: she had come to finish the task her relatives had begun; to ... JUDITH MCNAUGHT What made more sense was that the bargain she was bound to was to go on living as she had been doing... ALICE MUNRO She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her. ZORA NEALE HURSTON My mother started out by being a very good girl. She did everything that was expected of her, and it... RUTH REICHL She herself had never been able to be altogether herself: it had been denied her. D.H. LAWRENCE She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing. She looked as if her phone had been ... J.D. SALINGER Her heart had already been broken many times over, and yet she still believed she was destined to me... PAULO COELHO ..She still was not happy, she never had been. What caused this inadequacy in her life? Why did ever... GUSTAVE FLAUBERT It was not a trace amount, ... What she had in her was very potent. RAYMOND KELLY Jessie's family I had known because they had been in the arts world with her older sister for years.... PATTY GAIR Then he led her to sit by him on a fallen gum trunk, smooth and white, and he leaned to whisper in h... KATE MORTON Alma had grown as tall as a man by now, with broad shoulders. ... This need not have necessarily pre... ELIZABETH GILBERT It was like they waited to tell each other things that had never been told before. What she had to s... CARSON MCCULLERS She hardly ever thought of him. He had worn a place for himself in some corner of her heart, as a se... T.H. WHITE His hands tightened on her shoulders as the truth washed over him. My God, she really had told him y... CAROLYN JEWEL She was actively involved from the first days of the child's life, bathing her, feeding her, caring ... JANET JENKINS She had said he had been driven away from her by a dream... JOSEPH CONRAD She had not heard him enter, and hardly realized his presence there. She was yawning, and he saw the... THOMAS HARDY She felt lately as though she had served her purpose, done her job, and been dispensed with, not onl... DANIELLE STEEL Sharp knives seemed to cut her delicate feet, yet she hardly felt them, so deep was the pain in her ... HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN She understood that it had never just been about talent: it had also always been about money. Ethan ... MEG WOLITZER Josie just had a different spirit than her atmosphere. She wanted to break out of the walls that wer... JENNIFER ZIMMERMAN If Miss Beresford had not been in such a hurry to marry a poor country clergyman, there was no knowi... ELIZABETH GASKELL We had been following (the power points) and figured this had a chance of happening. The thing I tol... MARTIN APPEL The latter part of her stay in Voronezh had been the happiest period in Princess Marya's life. Her l... LEO TOLSTOY Something tugged inside him. A flutter of unease. Do you sing? Those had been her first words t... MARIE RUTKOSKI She had thought she'd already reached her capacity for pain and had no room inside her for more. But... KRISTIN CASHORE As her feet beat the concrete ground beneath them, her chest began to ache. It had been a long time ... ROSS CALIGIURI She's thinking that what she's been doing all these years isn't what she wants to do anymore. Someti... LEILA COBO Mrs. Jones had received a lot of injuries to her body, all over her body. She had over 60 wounds. Th... JOE WARD Elizabeth had never been more at a loss to make her feelings appear what they were not. It was neces... JANE AUSTEN
More Thomas Hardy
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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... 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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