Thomas Hardy Quotes

186 quotes in 2364 categories

• ...he seemed to approach the grave as an hyperbolic curve approaches a line, less directly as he got nearer, till it was doubtful if he…
• Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.
• The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes.
• The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him.
• A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all.
• It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.
• There are accents in the eye which are not on the tongue, and more tales come from pale lips than can enter an ear. It…
• And yet to every bad there is a worse.
• Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honor as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity.
• The resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.
• The sky was clear - remarkably clear - and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by…
• Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons.
• Some folk want their luck buttered.
• The offhand decision of some commonplace mind high in office at a critical moment influences the course of events for a hundred years.
• If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone.
• A woman would rather visit her own grave than the place where she has been young and beautiful after she is aged and ugly.
• I am the family face; flesh perishes, I live on.
• Aspect are within us, and who seems most kingly is king.
• Give the enemy not only a road for flight, but also a means of defending it.
• Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them.

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