Thomas Hardy: Trending quotes (page 4)

“Is a woman a thinking unit at all, or a fraction always wanting its integer?”

“Indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not.”

“Some women's love of being loved is insatiable; and so, often, is their love of loving; and in the last case they may find that they can't give it continuously to the chamber-officer appointed by the bishop's license to receive it.”

“But some women only require an emergency to make them fit for one.”

“You ride well, but you don't kiss nicely at all.”

“Many… have learned that the magnitude of lives is not as to their external displacements, but as to their subjective experiences. The impressionable peasant leads a larger, fuller, more dramatic life than the pachydermatous king.”

“You concede nothing to me and I have to concede everything to you.”

“The perfect woman, you see [is] a working-woman; not an idler; not a fine lady; but one who [uses] her hands and her head and her heart for the good of others.”

“If a way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst.”

“It was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity”

“Well, these sad and hopeless obstacles are welcome in one sense, for they enable us to look with indifference upon the cruel satires that Fate loves to indulge in.”

“He wished she knew his impressions, but he would as soon as thought of carrying an odour in a net as of attempting to convey the intangibles of his feeling in the coarse meshes of language. So he remained silent.”

“Some folks want their luck buttered.”

“I am not a fool, you know, although I am a woman, and have my woman’s moments.”

“I have felt lately, more and more, that my present way of living is bad in every respect.”

“I want to question my belief, so that what is left after I have questioned it, will be even stronger.”

“A blaze of love and extinction, was better than a lantern glimmer of the same which should last long years.”

“Many of her thoughts were perfect syllogisms; unluckily they always remained thoughts. Only a few were irrational assumptions; but, unfortunately, they were the ones which most frequently grew into deeds”

“You are Joseph the dreamer of dreams, dear Jude.
And a tragic Don Quixote. And sometimes you are St. Stephen, who, while they
were stoning him, could see Heaven opened. Oh, my poor friend and comrade,
you'll suffer yet!”