--- title: "30 Thomas Hardy Quotes by 30 authors" description: "Browse 30 Thomas Hardy quotes by 30 authors. Discover the best Thomas Hardy sayings and thoughts." image: "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/1f9/ben-elliot-16585_also_i-mainly-read-histories-and-biographies_3083934.jpg" --- > [I mainly read histories and biographies, but I'm also a big fan of Graham Swift and Thomas Hardy.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ben-elliot/i-mainly-read-histories-and-biographies-but-i-m-also-a-big-fan-of/) [Ben Elliot](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/ben-elliot/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/1f9/ben-elliot-16585_also_i-mainly-read-histories-and-biographies_3083934.jpg) > [I found English to be a sort of Thomas Hardy aversion therapy.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/neil-gaiman/i-found-english-to-be-a-sort-of-thomas-hardy-aversion-therapy/) [Neil Gaiman](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/neil-gaiman/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/34d/neil-gaiman-29_aversion_i-found-english-to-be-a-sort-of-thomas-h_2290069.jpg) > [I suppose you could say my father's world was Thomas Hardy and my mother's D.H. Lawrence.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/seamus-heaney/i-suppose-you-could-say-my-father-s-world-was-thomas-hardy-and-my/) [Seamus Heaney](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/seamus-heaney/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/47b/seamus-heaney-1711_could_i-suppose-you-could-say-my-father-s-worl_2348073.png) > [I sort of half read Thomas Hardy's 'The Mayor of Casterbridge.' It was assigned in 10th grade, and I just couldn't get…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/suzanne-collins/i-sort-of-half-read-thomas-hardy-s-the-mayor-of-casterbridge-it-was/) [Suzanne Collins](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/suzanne-collins/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/3ff/suzanne-collins-60_about_i-sort-of-half-read-thomas-hardy-s-the-m_2654418.jpg) > [“We late-lamented, resting here, Are mixed to human jam, And each to each exclaims in fear, ‘I know not which I am!’…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/deborah-crombie/we-late-lamented-resting-here-are-mixed-to-human-jam-and-each-to-each/) [Deborah Crombie](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/deborah-crombie/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/18c/deborah-crombie-46191_fear_we-late-lamented-resting-here-are-mixed_678358.jpg) > [Thomas Hardy once advised us to record impressions more and to express ideas less. Now and then I would remember this advice.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/mu-xin/thomas-hardy-once-advised-us-to-record-impressions-more-and-to/) [Mu Xin](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/mu-xin/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/2f5/mu-xin-38935_advice_thomas-hardy-once-advised-us-to-record-i_1511616.png) > [ one of Mr. \[Thomas\] Hardy's ancestors must have married a weeping willow. There are pages and pages in his collected poems which… ](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/rebecca-west/one-of-mr-thomas-hardy-s-ancestors-must-have-married-a-weeping-willow/) [Rebecca West](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/rebecca-west/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d4e/rebecca-west-1248_ancestor_one-of-mr-thomas-hardy-s-ancestors-must_2959484.jpg) > [I think it was W.H. Auden who said he was lucky that his first favorite poet was Thomas Hardy, who was a…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/david-duchovny/i-think-it-was-w-h-auden-who-said-he-was-lucky-that-his-first/) [David Duchovny](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/david-duchovny/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f74/david-duchovny-1754_auden_i-think-it-was-w-h-auden-who-said-he-was_2009928.jpg) > [English country life is more like Chekhov than 'The Archers' or Thomas Hardy or even the Updike ethic with which it is…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-gardam/english-country-life-is-more-like-chekhov-than-the-archers-or-thomas/) [Jane Gardam](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/jane-gardam/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/5a1/jane-gardam-20104_archer_english-country-life-is-more-like-chekho_1221379.png) > [“Like Thomas Hardy with his Casterbridge, my own fictional Pennington is based on a well-known English county town, which I embellish with…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/catherine-george/like-thomas-hardy-with-his-casterbridge-my-own-fictional-pennington/) Catherine George [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/919/catherine-george-226402_writing_like-thomas-hardy-with-his-casterbridge_2825665.jpg) > [England opened up the world of literature for me. Not really having a world of my own, I made up for my…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ruth-prawer-jhabvala/england-opened-up-the-world-of-literature-for-me-not-really-having-a/) [Ruth Prawer Jhabvala](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/ruth-prawer-jhabvala/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/aa9/ruth-prawer-jhabvala-23900_absorb_england-opened-up-the-world-of-literatur_2613701.jpg) > [I really, really wanted to write. I loved language. I loved literature. I loved reading. I never read a foreign language, I'm…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/robert-stone/i-really-really-wanted-to-write-i-loved-language-i-loved-literature-i/) [Robert Stone](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/robert-stone/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/bb1/robert-stone-13495_19th-century_i-really-really-wanted-to-write-i-loved_1916104.png) > [“When I mentioned to a friend I was writing a book about eggs he told me to be sure to mention how…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/tim-birkhead/when-i-mentioned-to-a-friend-i-was-writing-a-book-about-eggs-he-told/) [Tim Birkhead](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/tim-birkhead/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/315/tim-birkhead-42213_books_when-i-mentioned-to-a-friend-i-was-writi_562300.jpg) > [“What about fateful turns in your life? Naturalists like Thomas Hardy proposed that some people are simply born under 'a blighted star'…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/roger-leslie/what-about-fateful-turns-in-your-life-naturalists-like-thomas-hardy/) Roger Leslie [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/59d/roger-leslie-274085_life_what-about-fateful-turns-in-your-life-na_868157.jpg) > [“Under coverture, a wife was required to live where her husband demanded, her earnings belonged to her husband and her children were…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/carole-pateman/under-coverture-a-wife-was-required-to-live-where-her-husband/) [Carole Pateman](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/carole-pateman/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/95e/carole-pateman-35945_marriage_under-coverture-a-wife-was-required-to-l_3129242.jpg) > [“I must assume that knowing is better than not know, venturing better than not venturing; and that magic and illusion, however rich,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/irvin-d-yalom/i-must-assume-that-knowing-is-better-than-not-know-venturing-better/) [Irvin D. Yalom](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/irvin-d-yalom/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/1fc/irvin-d-yalom-1519_human-spirit_i-must-assume-that-knowing-is-better-tha_704217.png) > [“I would not have majored in English and gone on to teach literature had I not been able to construct a counterargument…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/mary-rose-o-reilley/i-would-not-have-majored-in-english-and-gone-on-to-teach-literature/) [Mary Rose O'Reilley](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/mary-rose-o-reilley/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/e23/mary-rose-o-reilley-27230_able_i-would-not-have-majored-in-english-and_1863584.jpg) > [Bitter criticism caused the sensitive Thomas Hardy, one of the finest novelists ever to enrich English literature, to give up forever the…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/dale-carnegie/bitter-criticism-caused-the-sensitive-thomas-hardy-one-of-the-finest/) [Dale Carnegie](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/dale-carnegie/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/92f/dale-carnegie-382_anger_bitter-criticism-caused-the-sensitive-th_1711898.jpg) > [“Few poets better convey the uneasy transition from Victorianism to Modernism than Thomas Hardy. His novels, written between 1870 and 1895, made…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ronald-carter/few-poets-better-convey-the-uneasy-transition-from-victorianism-to/) [Ronald Carter](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/ronald-carter/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b62/ronald-carter-13636_literary-criticism_few-poets-better-convey-the-uneasy-trans_718401.jpg) > [“I refused to have bookshelves, horrified that I'd feel compelled to organise the books in some regimented system - Dewey or alphabetical…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/rebecca-makkai/i-refused-to-have-bookshelves-horrified-that-i-d-feel-compelled-to/) [Rebecca Makkai](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/rebecca-makkai/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/df3/rebecca-makkai-20617_books_i-refused-to-have-bookshelves-horrified_2762055.jpg) > [“Haunting the library as a kid, reading poetry books when I was not reading bird books, I had been astonished at how…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/kenn-kaufman/haunting-the-library-as-a-kid-reading-poetry-books-when-i-was-not/) [Kenn Kaufman](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/kenn-kaufman/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/9ee/kenn-kaufman-55077_books_haunting-the-library-as-a-kid-reading-po_616300.jpg) > [“Last Victorian and Edwardian Britain saw a mega-change in reading habits. For the first time fiction took the primary place in book…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/iain-h-murray/last-victorian-and-edwardian-britain-saw-a-mega-change-in-reading/) Iain H. Murray [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/824/iain-h-murray-78426_book-publishing_last-victorian-and-edwardian-britain-saw_2300569.jpg) > [“The truth about any artist, however terrible, is better than the silence… I know many writers fight fanatically to keep their published…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/john-fowles/the-truth-about-any-artist-however-terrible-is-better-than-the/) [John Fowles](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/john-fowles/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/64d/john-fowles-816_art_the-truth-about-any-artist-however-terri_2272186.jpg) > [“I The moving sun-shapes on the spray, The sparkles where the brook was flowing, Pink faces, plightings, moonlit May, These were the…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-nuttall/i-the-moving-sun-shapes-on-the-spray-the-sparkles-where-the-brook-was/) [Christopher Nuttall](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/christopher-nuttall/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/92f/christopher-nuttall-28371_thomas-hardy_i-the-moving-sun-shapes-on-the-spray-the_312563.jpg) > [“West Country novelist Thomas Hardy almost did not survive his birth in 1840 because everyone thought he was stillborn. He did not…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/phil-mason/west-country-novelist-thomas-hardy-almost-did-not-survive-his-birth/) Phil Mason [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/008/phil-mason-80842_english-literature_west-country-novelist-thomas-hardy-almos_539702.jpg) > [“During any prolonged activity one tends to forget original intentions. But I believe that, when making a start on A Month in…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/j-l-carr/during-any-prolonged-activity-one-tends-to-forget-original-intentions/) [J.L. Carr](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/j-l-carr/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/90c/j-l-carr-39640_books_during-any-prolonged-activity-one-tends_282733.jpg) > [“The Convergence of the Twain Thomas Hardy, 1840 - 1928 (Lines on the loss of the “Titanic”) I In a solitude of…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/thomas-hardy/the-convergence-of-the-twain-thomas-hardy-1840-1928-lines-on-the-loss/) [Thomas Hardy](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/thomas-hardy/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/1e8/thomas-hardy-410_life_the-convergence-of-the-twain-thomas-hard_560841.jpg) > [“If 'dead' matter has reared up this curious landscape of fiddling crickets, song sparrows, and wondering men, it must be plain even…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/loren-eiseley/if-dead-matter-has-reared-up-this-curious-landscape-of-fiddling/) [Loren Eiseley](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/loren-eiseley/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/2de/loren-eiseley-3848_life_if-dead-matter-has-reared-up-this-curiou_1318399.jpg) > [Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles is a novel that I have read over and over and over again. Tess is a…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/laetitia-casta/thomas-hardy-s-tess-of-the-d-urbervilles-is-a-novel-that-i-have-read/) [Laetitia Casta](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/laetitia-casta/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b70/laetitia-casta-26619_book_thomas-hardy-s-tess-of-the-d-urbervilles_977913.png) > [ “Stilletos of a frozen stillicide \[...\] In the lovely line heading this comment the reader should note the last word. My dictionary… ](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/vladimir-nabokov/stilletos-of-a-frozen-stillicide-in-the-lovely-line-heading-this/) [Vladimir Nabokov](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/vladimir-nabokov/) [Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/1e8/vladimir-nabokov-198_books_stilletos-of-a-frozen-stillicide-in-the_210741.jpg) ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "ItemList", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/thomas-hardy/#itemlist", "name": "Thomas Hardy Quotes", "numberOfItems": 30, "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "I mainly read histories and biographies, but I'm also a big fan of Graham Swift and Thomas Hardy.", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Ben Elliot" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ben-elliot/i-mainly-read-histories-and-biographies-but-i-m-also-a-big-fan-of/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/1f9/ben-elliot-16585_also_i-mainly-read-histories-and-biographies_3083934.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/1f9/ben-elliot-16585_also_i-mainly-read-histories-and-biographies_3083934.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/1f9/ben-elliot-16585_also_i-mainly-read-histories-and-biographies_3083934.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“I mainly read histories and biographies, but I'm also a big fan of Graham Swift and Thomas Hardy.” — Ben Elliot", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "I found English to be a sort of Thomas Hardy aversion therapy.", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Neil Gaiman" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/neil-gaiman/i-found-english-to-be-a-sort-of-thomas-hardy-aversion-therapy/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/34d/neil-gaiman-29_aversion_i-found-english-to-be-a-sort-of-thomas-h_2290069.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/34d/neil-gaiman-29_aversion_i-found-english-to-be-a-sort-of-thomas-h_2290069.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/34d/neil-gaiman-29_aversion_i-found-english-to-be-a-sort-of-thomas-h_2290069.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“I found English to be a sort of Thomas Hardy aversion therapy.” — Neil Gaiman", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "I suppose you could say my father's world was Thomas Hardy and my mother's D.H. Lawrence.", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Seamus Heaney" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/seamus-heaney/i-suppose-you-could-say-my-father-s-world-was-thomas-hardy-and-my/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/47b/seamus-heaney-1711_could_i-suppose-you-could-say-my-father-s-worl_2348073.png", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/47b/seamus-heaney-1711_could_i-suppose-you-could-say-my-father-s-worl_2348073.png", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/47b/seamus-heaney-1711_could_i-suppose-you-could-say-my-father-s-worl_2348073.png", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“I suppose you could say my father's world was Thomas Hardy and my mother's D.H. Lawrence.” — Seamus Heaney", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "I sort of half read Thomas Hardy's 'The Mayor of Casterbridge.' It was assigned in 10th grade, and I just couldn't get into it. About seven years later, I rediscovered Hardy and consumed four of his novels in a row.", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Suzanne Collins" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/suzanne-collins/i-sort-of-half-read-thomas-hardy-s-the-mayor-of-casterbridge-it-was/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/3ff/suzanne-collins-60_about_i-sort-of-half-read-thomas-hardy-s-the-m_2654418.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/3ff/suzanne-collins-60_about_i-sort-of-half-read-thomas-hardy-s-the-m_2654418.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/3ff/suzanne-collins-60_about_i-sort-of-half-read-thomas-hardy-s-the-m_2654418.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“I sort of half read Thomas Hardy's 'The Mayor of Casterbridge.' It was assigned in 10th grade, and I just…” — Suzanne Collins", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 5, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“We late-lamented, resting here, Are mixed to human jam, And each to each exclaims in fear, ‘I know not which I am!’ ” —Thomas Hardy, “The Levelled Churchyard,” 1882”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Deborah Crombie" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/deborah-crombie/we-late-lamented-resting-here-are-mixed-to-human-jam-and-each-to-each/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/18c/deborah-crombie-46191_fear_we-late-lamented-resting-here-are-mixed_678358.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/18c/deborah-crombie-46191_fear_we-late-lamented-resting-here-are-mixed_678358.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/18c/deborah-crombie-46191_fear_we-late-lamented-resting-here-are-mixed_678358.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“We late-lamented, resting here, Are mixed to human jam, And each to each exclaims in fear, ‘I know not which…” — Deborah Crombie", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 6, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Thomas Hardy once advised us to record impressions more and to express ideas less. Now and then I would remember this advice.", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Mu Xin" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/mu-xin/thomas-hardy-once-advised-us-to-record-impressions-more-and-to/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/2f5/mu-xin-38935_advice_thomas-hardy-once-advised-us-to-record-i_1511616.png", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/2f5/mu-xin-38935_advice_thomas-hardy-once-advised-us-to-record-i_1511616.png", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/2f5/mu-xin-38935_advice_thomas-hardy-once-advised-us-to-record-i_1511616.png", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Thomas Hardy once advised us to record impressions more and to express ideas less. Now and then I would…” — Mu Xin", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 7, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "one of Mr. [Thomas] Hardy's ancestors must have married a weeping willow. There are pages and pages in his collected poems which are simply plain narratives in ballad form of how an unenjoyable time was had by all.", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Rebecca West" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/rebecca-west/one-of-mr-thomas-hardy-s-ancestors-must-have-married-a-weeping-willow/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d4e/rebecca-west-1248_ancestor_one-of-mr-thomas-hardy-s-ancestors-must_2959484.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d4e/rebecca-west-1248_ancestor_one-of-mr-thomas-hardy-s-ancestors-must_2959484.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d4e/rebecca-west-1248_ancestor_one-of-mr-thomas-hardy-s-ancestors-must_2959484.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“one of Mr. [Thomas] Hardy's ancestors must have married a weeping willow. There are pages and pages in his…” — Rebecca West", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 8, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "I think it was W.H. Auden who said he was lucky that his first favorite poet was Thomas Hardy, who was a good but not a great poet, because if you are exposed to the greats too soon it can just squash you as a writer.", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "David Duchovny" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/david-duchovny/i-think-it-was-w-h-auden-who-said-he-was-lucky-that-his-first/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f74/david-duchovny-1754_auden_i-think-it-was-w-h-auden-who-said-he-was_2009928.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f74/david-duchovny-1754_auden_i-think-it-was-w-h-auden-who-said-he-was_2009928.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/f74/david-duchovny-1754_auden_i-think-it-was-w-h-auden-who-said-he-was_2009928.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“I think it was W.H. Auden who said he was lucky that his first favorite poet was Thomas Hardy, who was a…” — David Duchovny", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 9, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "English country life is more like Chekhov than 'The Archers' or Thomas Hardy or even the Updike ethic with which it is sometimes compared.", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Jane Gardam" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/jane-gardam/english-country-life-is-more-like-chekhov-than-the-archers-or-thomas/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/5a1/jane-gardam-20104_archer_english-country-life-is-more-like-chekho_1221379.png", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/5a1/jane-gardam-20104_archer_english-country-life-is-more-like-chekho_1221379.png", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/5a1/jane-gardam-20104_archer_english-country-life-is-more-like-chekho_1221379.png", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“English country life is more like Chekhov than 'The Archers' or Thomas Hardy or even the Updike ethic with…” — Jane Gardam", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 10, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“Like Thomas Hardy with his Casterbridge, my own fictional Pennington is based on a well-known English county town, which I embellish with buildings, parks, and houses from my imagination.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Catherine George" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/catherine-george/like-thomas-hardy-with-his-casterbridge-my-own-fictional-pennington/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/919/catherine-george-226402_writing_like-thomas-hardy-with-his-casterbridge_2825665.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/919/catherine-george-226402_writing_like-thomas-hardy-with-his-casterbridge_2825665.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/919/catherine-george-226402_writing_like-thomas-hardy-with-his-casterbridge_2825665.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Like Thomas Hardy with his Casterbridge, my own fictional Pennington is based on a well-known English county…” — Catherine George", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 11, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "England opened up the world of literature for me. Not really having a world of my own, I made up for my disinheritance by absorbing the world of others... I loved them: George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens... I adopted them passionately.", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Ruth Prawer Jhabvala" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ruth-prawer-jhabvala/england-opened-up-the-world-of-literature-for-me-not-really-having-a/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/aa9/ruth-prawer-jhabvala-23900_absorb_england-opened-up-the-world-of-literatur_2613701.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/aa9/ruth-prawer-jhabvala-23900_absorb_england-opened-up-the-world-of-literatur_2613701.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/aa9/ruth-prawer-jhabvala-23900_absorb_england-opened-up-the-world-of-literatur_2613701.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“England opened up the world of literature for me. Not really having a world of my own, I made up for my…” — Ruth Prawer Jhabvala", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 12, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "I really, really wanted to write. I loved language. I loved literature. I loved reading. I never read a foreign language, I'm afraid, but I loved Flaubert. I loved the 19th-century classics. I love Thomas Hardy. I wanted to be a goof on a bus, but I wanted to write more.", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Robert Stone" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/robert-stone/i-really-really-wanted-to-write-i-loved-language-i-loved-literature-i/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/bb1/robert-stone-13495_19th-century_i-really-really-wanted-to-write-i-loved_1916104.png", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/bb1/robert-stone-13495_19th-century_i-really-really-wanted-to-write-i-loved_1916104.png", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/bb1/robert-stone-13495_19th-century_i-really-really-wanted-to-write-i-loved_1916104.png", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“I really, really wanted to write. I loved language. I loved literature. I loved reading. I never read a…” — Robert Stone", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 13, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“When I mentioned to a friend I was writing a book about eggs he told me to be sure to mention how in Thomas Hardy's \"Jude the Obscure\" the young Arabella incubates a sky-blue egg of a song bird in the cleavage of her bosom ... When I checked, I was disappointed to find it wasn't a song thrush egg, but that of a chicken ... The original image in my mind disintegrated like the sound of a vinyl record after the power has been turned off.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Tim Birkhead" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/tim-birkhead/when-i-mentioned-to-a-friend-i-was-writing-a-book-about-eggs-he-told/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/315/tim-birkhead-42213_books_when-i-mentioned-to-a-friend-i-was-writi_562300.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/315/tim-birkhead-42213_books_when-i-mentioned-to-a-friend-i-was-writi_562300.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/315/tim-birkhead-42213_books_when-i-mentioned-to-a-friend-i-was-writi_562300.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“When I mentioned to a friend I was writing a book about eggs he told me to be sure to mention how in Thomas…” — Tim Birkhead", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 14, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“What about fateful turns in your life? Naturalists like Thomas Hardy proposed that some people are simply born under 'a blighted star' like his heroine in Tess of the D'Urbervilles. If so, then no matter what we did, we couldn't improve our lives.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Roger Leslie" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/roger-leslie/what-about-fateful-turns-in-your-life-naturalists-like-thomas-hardy/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/59d/roger-leslie-274085_life_what-about-fateful-turns-in-your-life-na_868157.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/59d/roger-leslie-274085_life_what-about-fateful-turns-in-your-life-na_868157.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/59d/roger-leslie-274085_life_what-about-fateful-turns-in-your-life-na_868157.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“What about fateful turns in your life? Naturalists like Thomas Hardy proposed that some people are simply…” — Roger Leslie", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 15, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“Under coverture, a wife was required to live where her husband demanded, her earnings belonged to her husband and her children were the property of her husband, just as the children of the female slave belonged to her master. But perhaps the most graphic illustration of the continuity between slavery and marriage was that in England – as Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge reminds us – wives could be sold at public auctions.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Carole Pateman" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/carole-pateman/under-coverture-a-wife-was-required-to-live-where-her-husband/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/95e/carole-pateman-35945_marriage_under-coverture-a-wife-was-required-to-l_3129242.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/95e/carole-pateman-35945_marriage_under-coverture-a-wife-was-required-to-l_3129242.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/95e/carole-pateman-35945_marriage_under-coverture-a-wife-was-required-to-l_3129242.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Under coverture, a wife was required to live where her husband demanded, her earnings belonged to her…” — Carole Pateman", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 16, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“I must assume that knowing is better than not know, venturing better than not venturing; and that magic and illusion, however rich, however alluring, ultimately weaken the human spirit. I take with deep seriousness Thomas Hardy's words, 'If a way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Irvin D. Yalom" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/irvin-d-yalom/i-must-assume-that-knowing-is-better-than-not-know-venturing-better/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/1fc/irvin-d-yalom-1519_human-spirit_i-must-assume-that-knowing-is-better-tha_704217.png", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/1fc/irvin-d-yalom-1519_human-spirit_i-must-assume-that-knowing-is-better-tha_704217.png", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/1fc/irvin-d-yalom-1519_human-spirit_i-must-assume-that-knowing-is-better-tha_704217.png", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“I must assume that knowing is better than not know, venturing better than not venturing; and that magic and…” — Irvin D. Yalom", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 17, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“I would not have majored in English and gone on to teach literature had I not been able to construct a counterargument about the truthfulness of fiction; still, as writers turn away from the industrious villages of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, I learn less and less from them that helps me to ponder my life. In time, I found myself agreeing with the course evaluations written by my testier freshman students:'All the literature we read this term was depressing.' How naive. How sane.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Mary Rose O'Reilley" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/mary-rose-o-reilley/i-would-not-have-majored-in-english-and-gone-on-to-teach-literature/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/e23/mary-rose-o-reilley-27230_able_i-would-not-have-majored-in-english-and_1863584.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/e23/mary-rose-o-reilley-27230_able_i-would-not-have-majored-in-english-and_1863584.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/e23/mary-rose-o-reilley-27230_able_i-would-not-have-majored-in-english-and_1863584.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“I would not have majored in English and gone on to teach literature had I not been able to construct a…” — Mary Rose O'Reilley", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 18, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Bitter criticism caused the sensitive Thomas Hardy, one of the finest novelists ever to enrich English literature, to give up forever the writing of fiction. Criticism drove Thomas Chatterton, the English poet, to suicide. . . . Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain - and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Dale Carnegie" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/dale-carnegie/bitter-criticism-caused-the-sensitive-thomas-hardy-one-of-the-finest/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/92f/dale-carnegie-382_anger_bitter-criticism-caused-the-sensitive-th_1711898.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/92f/dale-carnegie-382_anger_bitter-criticism-caused-the-sensitive-th_1711898.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/92f/dale-carnegie-382_anger_bitter-criticism-caused-the-sensitive-th_1711898.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Bitter criticism caused the sensitive Thomas Hardy, one of the finest novelists ever to enrich English…” — Dale Carnegie", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 19, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“Few poets better convey the uneasy transition from Victorianism to Modernism than Thomas Hardy. His novels, written between 1870 and 1895, made him not only the recorder of his distinctive region of 'Wessex', but the explorer of the transition of lives and minds from the age of traditional values and religious certainties to the age of godlessness and modern tragedy, a transition sometimes described as 'the clash of the modern'.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Ronald Carter" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/ronald-carter/few-poets-better-convey-the-uneasy-transition-from-victorianism-to/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b62/ronald-carter-13636_literary-criticism_few-poets-better-convey-the-uneasy-trans_718401.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b62/ronald-carter-13636_literary-criticism_few-poets-better-convey-the-uneasy-trans_718401.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b62/ronald-carter-13636_literary-criticism_few-poets-better-convey-the-uneasy-trans_718401.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Few poets better convey the uneasy transition from Victorianism to Modernism than Thomas Hardy. His novels…” — Ronald Carter", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 20, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“I refused to have bookshelves, horrified that I'd feel compelled to organise the books in some regimented system - Dewey or alphabetical or worse - and so the books lived in stacks, some as tall as me, in the most subjective order I could invent. Thus Nabokov lived between Gogol and Hemingway, cradled between the Old World and the New; Willa Cather and Theodore Dreiser and Thomas Hardy were stacked together not for their chronological proximity but because they all reminded me in some way of dryness (though in Dreiser's case I think I was focused mainly on his name): George Eliot and Jane Austen shared a stack with Thackeray because all I had of his was Vanity Fair , and I thought that Becky Sharp would do best in the presence of ladies (and deep down I worried that if I put her next to David Copperfield, she might seduce him).”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Rebecca Makkai" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/rebecca-makkai/i-refused-to-have-bookshelves-horrified-that-i-d-feel-compelled-to/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/df3/rebecca-makkai-20617_books_i-refused-to-have-bookshelves-horrified_2762055.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/df3/rebecca-makkai-20617_books_i-refused-to-have-bookshelves-horrified_2762055.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/df3/rebecca-makkai-20617_books_i-refused-to-have-bookshelves-horrified_2762055.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“I refused to have bookshelves, horrified that I'd feel compelled to organise the books in some regimented…” — Rebecca Makkai", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 21, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“Haunting the library as a kid, reading poetry books when I was not reading bird books, I had been astonished at how often birds were mentioned in British poetry. Songsters like nightingales and Sky Larks appeared in literally dozens of works, going back beyond Shakespeare, back beyond Chaucer. Entire poems dedicated to such birds were written by Tennyson, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and many lesser-known poets. I had run across half a dozen British poems just about Sky Larks; Thomas Hardy had even written a poem about Shelley’s poem about the Sky Lark. The love of birds and of the English language were intermingled in British literary history. Somehow we Americans had failed to import this English love of birds along with the language, except in diluted form. But we had imported a few of the English birds themselves — along with birds from practically everywhere else.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Kenn Kaufman" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/kenn-kaufman/haunting-the-library-as-a-kid-reading-poetry-books-when-i-was-not/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/9ee/kenn-kaufman-55077_books_haunting-the-library-as-a-kid-reading-po_616300.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/9ee/kenn-kaufman-55077_books_haunting-the-library-as-a-kid-reading-po_616300.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/9ee/kenn-kaufman-55077_books_haunting-the-library-as-a-kid-reading-po_616300.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Haunting the library as a kid, reading poetry books when I was not reading bird books, I had been astonished…” — Kenn Kaufman", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 22, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“Last Victorian and Edwardian Britain saw a mega-change in reading habits. For the first time fiction took the primary place in book publishing, and the medium was taken up by briliant and entertaining authors with an agenda for 'a brave new world'. Such men as Thomas Hardy, H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw were the opinion-makers for coming generations. 'With the next phase of Victorian fiction', wrote G. K. Chesterton, 'we enter a new world; the later, more revolutionary, more continental, freer but in some ways weker world in which we live today.' Chesterton did not live to see the full consequences of the change but W. R. Inge predicted what was coming when he wrote: No God. No country. No family. Refusal to serve in war. Free love. More play. Less work. No punishments. Go as you please. It is difficult to imagine any programme which, if carried out, would be more utterly ruinous to a country situated as Great Britain is today.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Iain H. Murray" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/iain-h-murray/last-victorian-and-edwardian-britain-saw-a-mega-change-in-reading/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/824/iain-h-murray-78426_book-publishing_last-victorian-and-edwardian-britain-saw_2300569.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/824/iain-h-murray-78426_book-publishing_last-victorian-and-edwardian-britain-saw_2300569.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/824/iain-h-murray-78426_book-publishing_last-victorian-and-edwardian-britain-saw_2300569.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Last Victorian and Edwardian Britain saw a mega-change in reading habits. For the first time fiction took…” — Iain H. Murray", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 23, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“The truth about any artist, however terrible, is better than the silence… I know many writers fight fanatically to keep their published self separate from their private reality… But I've always thought of that as something out of our social, time-serving side; not our true artistic ones. I don't see how the \"lies\" we write and the \"lies\" we live can or should be divided. They are seamless, one canvas, for me. While we live we can keep them apart, but not command the future to do the same. The outrage some Thomas Hardy fans have shown over all the revelations about the private man seems to me hypocritical in the extreme. They hugely enrich our understanding of him… I have had to convince a number of friends and relatives that the kindest act to the [writer] is remembering them - and that all art comes from a human being, not out of mysterious thin air. (Letter to Jo Jones, September 15, 1980, arguing for the preservation of John Collier's personal papers)”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "John Fowles" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/john-fowles/the-truth-about-any-artist-however-terrible-is-better-than-the/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/64d/john-fowles-816_art_the-truth-about-any-artist-however-terri_2272186.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/64d/john-fowles-816_art_the-truth-about-any-artist-however-terri_2272186.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/64d/john-fowles-816_art_the-truth-about-any-artist-however-terri_2272186.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“The truth about any artist, however terrible, is better than the silence… I know many writers fight…” — John Fowles", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 24, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“I The moving sun-shapes on the spray, The sparkles where the brook was flowing, Pink faces, plightings, moonlit May, These were the things we wished would stay; But they were going.   II Seasons of blankness as of snow, The silent bleed of a world decaying, The moan of multitudes in woe, These were the things we wished would go; But they were staying.   III Then we looked closelier at Time, And saw his ghostly arms revolving To sweep off woeful things with prime, Things sinister with things sublime Alike dissolving.   (Thomas Hardy - Going and Staying.)”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Christopher Nuttall" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/christopher-nuttall/i-the-moving-sun-shapes-on-the-spray-the-sparkles-where-the-brook-was/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/92f/christopher-nuttall-28371_thomas-hardy_i-the-moving-sun-shapes-on-the-spray-the_312563.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/92f/christopher-nuttall-28371_thomas-hardy_i-the-moving-sun-shapes-on-the-spray-the_312563.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/92f/christopher-nuttall-28371_thomas-hardy_i-the-moving-sun-shapes-on-the-spray-the_312563.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“I The moving sun-shapes on the spray, The sparkles where the brook was flowing, Pink faces, plightings…” — Christopher Nuttall", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 25, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“West Country novelist Thomas Hardy almost did not survive his birth in 1840 because everyone thought he was stillborn. He did not appear to be breathing and was put to one side for dead. The nurse attending the birth only by chance noticed a slight movement that showed the baby was in fact alive. He lived to be 87 and gave the world 18 novels, including some of the most widely read in English literature. When he did die, there was controversy over where he should be laid to rest. Public opinion felt him too famous to lie anywhere other than in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey, the national shrine. He, however, had left clear instructions to be buried in Stinsford, near his birthplace and next to his parents, grandparents, first wife and sister. A compromise was brokered. His ashes were interred in the Abbey. His heart would be buried in his beloved home county. The plan agreed, his heart was taken to his sister’s house ready for burial. Shortly before, as it lay ready on the kitchen table, the family cat grabbed it and disappeared with it into the woods. Although, simultaneously with the national funeral in Westminster Abbey, a burial ceremony took place on 16 January 1928, at Stinsford, there is uncertainty to this day as to what was in the casket: some say it was buried empty; others that it contained the captured cat which had consumed the heart.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Phil Mason" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/phil-mason/west-country-novelist-thomas-hardy-almost-did-not-survive-his-birth/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/008/phil-mason-80842_english-literature_west-country-novelist-thomas-hardy-almos_539702.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/008/phil-mason-80842_english-literature_west-country-novelist-thomas-hardy-almos_539702.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/008/phil-mason-80842_english-literature_west-country-novelist-thomas-hardy-almos_539702.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“West Country novelist Thomas Hardy almost did not survive his birth in 1840 because everyone thought he was…” — Phil Mason", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 26, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“During any prolonged activity one tends to forget original intentions. But I believe that, when making a start on A Month in the Country, my idea was to write an easy-going story, a rural idyll along the lines of Thomas Hardy's Under the Greenwood Tree. And, to establish the right tone of voice to tell such a story, I wanted its narrator to look back regretfully across forty or fifty years but, recalling a time irrecoverably lost, still feel a tug at the heart. And I wanted it to ring true. So I set its background up in the North Riding, on the Vale of Mowbray, where my folks had lived for many generations and where, in the plow-horse and candle-to-bed age, I grew up in a household like that of the Ellerbeck family. Novel-writing can be a cold-blooded business. One uses whatever happens to be lying around in memory and employs it to suit one's ends. The visit to the dying girl, a first sermon, the Sunday-school treat, a day in a harvest field and much more happened between the Pennine Moors and the Yorkshire Wolds. But the church in the fields is in Northamptonshire, its churchyard in Norfolk, its vicarage London. All's grist that comes to the mill. Then, again, during the months whilst one is writing about the past, a story is colored by what presently is happening to its writer. So, imperceptibly, the tone of voice changes, original intentions slip away. And I found myself looking through another window at a darker landscape inhabited by neither the present nor the past.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "J.L. Carr" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/j-l-carr/during-any-prolonged-activity-one-tends-to-forget-original-intentions/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/90c/j-l-carr-39640_books_during-any-prolonged-activity-one-tends_282733.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/90c/j-l-carr-39640_books_during-any-prolonged-activity-one-tends_282733.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/90c/j-l-carr-39640_books_during-any-prolonged-activity-one-tends_282733.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“During any prolonged activity one tends to forget original intentions. But I believe that, when making a…” — J.L. Carr", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 27, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“The Convergence of the Twain Thomas Hardy, 1840 - 1928 (Lines on the loss of the “Titanic”) I In a solitude of the sea Deep from human vanity, And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she. II Steel chambers, late the pyres Of her salamandrine fires, Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres. III Over the mirrors meant To glass the opulent The sea-worm crawls—grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent. IV Jewels in joy designed To ravish the sensuous mind Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind. V Dim moon-eyed fishes near Gaze at the gilded gear And query: “What does this vaingloriousness down here?”. . . VI Well: while was fashioning This creature of cleaving wing, The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything VII Prepared a sinister mate For her—so gaily great— A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate. VIII And as the smart ship grew In stature, grace, and hue In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too. IX Alien they seemed to be: No mortal eye could see The intimate welding of their later history. X Or sign that they were bent By paths coincident On being anon twin halves of one August event, XI Till the Spinner of the Years Said “Now!” And each one hears, And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Thomas Hardy" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/thomas-hardy/the-convergence-of-the-twain-thomas-hardy-1840-1928-lines-on-the-loss/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/1e8/thomas-hardy-410_life_the-convergence-of-the-twain-thomas-hard_560841.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/1e8/thomas-hardy-410_life_the-convergence-of-the-twain-thomas-hard_560841.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/1e8/thomas-hardy-410_life_the-convergence-of-the-twain-thomas-hard_560841.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“The Convergence of the Twain Thomas Hardy, 1840 - 1928 (Lines on the loss of the “Titanic”) I In a solitude…” — Thomas Hardy", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 28, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“If 'dead' matter has reared up this curious landscape of fiddling crickets, song sparrows, and wondering men, it must be plain even to the most devoted materialists that the matter of which he speaks contains amazing, if not dreadful, powers, and may not impossibly be, as Thomas Hardy has suggested, 'but one mask of many worn by the Great Face behind.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Loren Eiseley" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/loren-eiseley/if-dead-matter-has-reared-up-this-curious-landscape-of-fiddling/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/2de/loren-eiseley-3848_life_if-dead-matter-has-reared-up-this-curiou_1318399.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/2de/loren-eiseley-3848_life_if-dead-matter-has-reared-up-this-curiou_1318399.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/2de/loren-eiseley-3848_life_if-dead-matter-has-reared-up-this-curiou_1318399.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“If 'dead' matter has reared up this curious landscape of fiddling crickets, song sparrows, and wondering…” — Loren Eiseley", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 29, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles is a novel that I have read over and over and over again. Tess is a pure child who has an inner glow none of the others in the book possess. They reject her because she is different, and they try in every possible manner to destroy her, because they are jealous. It is an extraordinary love story.", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Laetitia Casta" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/laetitia-casta/thomas-hardy-s-tess-of-the-d-urbervilles-is-a-novel-that-i-have-read/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b70/laetitia-casta-26619_book_thomas-hardy-s-tess-of-the-d-urbervilles_977913.png", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b70/laetitia-casta-26619_book_thomas-hardy-s-tess-of-the-d-urbervilles_977913.png", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b70/laetitia-casta-26619_book_thomas-hardy-s-tess-of-the-d-urbervilles_977913.png", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles is a novel that I have read over and over and over again. Tess is a…” — Laetitia Casta", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 30, "item": { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "“Stilletos of a frozen stillicide [...] In the lovely line heading this comment the reader should note the last word. My dictionary defines it as 'a succession of drops falling from the eaves, eavesdrop, cavesdrop.' I remember having encountered it for the first time in a poem by Thomas Hardy. The bright frost has eternalized the bright eavesdrop.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Vladimir Nabokov" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/vladimir-nabokov/stilletos-of-a-frozen-stillicide-in-the-lovely-line-heading-this/", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/1e8/vladimir-nabokov-198_books_stilletos-of-a-frozen-stillicide-in-the_210741.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/1e8/vladimir-nabokov-198_books_stilletos-of-a-frozen-stillicide-in-the_210741.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/1e8/vladimir-nabokov-198_books_stilletos-of-a-frozen-stillicide-in-the_210741.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Stilletos of a frozen stillicide [...] In the lovely line heading this comment the reader should note the…” — Vladimir Nabokov", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } } } ] }, { "@type": "CollectionPage", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/thomas-hardy/#webpage", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/thomas-hardy/", "name": "Thomas Hardy Quotes", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#website" }, "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/thomas-hardy/#itemlist" }, "primaryImageOfPage": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/1f9/ben-elliot-16585_also_i-mainly-read-histories-and-biographies_3083934.jpg" }, "description": "Browse 30 Thomas Hardy quotes by 30 authors. 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