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Thomas Hardy Quotes
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Thomas Hardy was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, especially William Wordsworth. He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain, such as those from his native South West England.

While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life and regarded himself primarily as a poet, his first collection was not published until 1898. Initially, therefore, he gained fame as the author of novels such as Far from the Madding Crowd , The Mayor of Casterbridge , Tess of the d'Urbervilles , and Jude the Obscure . During his lifetime, Hardy's poetry was acclaimed by younger poets who viewed him as a mentor. After his death his poems were lauded by Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden and Philip Larkin.Many of his novels concern tragic characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances, and they are often set in the semi-fictional region of Wessex; initially based on the medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Hardy's Wessex eventually came to include the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Hampshire and much of Berkshire, in southwest and south central England. Two of his novels, Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd, were listed in the top 50 on the BBC's survey The Big Read. Wikipedia  

✵ 2. June 1840 – 11. January 1928
Thomas Hardy photo
Thomas Hardy: 171 quotes23 likes

Thomas Hardy Quotes

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

Thomas Hardy book A Pair of Blue Eyes

Source: A Pair of Blue Eyes

“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.”

Thomas Hardy

Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

“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.”

Thomas Hardy

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

Thomas Hardy

Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

“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.”

Thomas Hardy

“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.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd

“Some folks want their luck buttered.”

Thomas Hardy book The Mayor of Casterbridge

Source: The Mayor of Casterbridge

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

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd

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

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd

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

Thomas Hardy

Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

“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”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd

“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!”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Source: Jude the Obscure

“Bless thy simplicity, Tess”

Thomas Hardy

Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

“We ought to have lived in mental communion, and no more.”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Source: Jude the Obscure

“So do flux and reflux--the rhythm of change--alternate and persist in everything under the sky.”

Thomas Hardy

Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

“Troy's deformities lay deep down from a woman's vision, whilst his embellishments were upon the very surface; thus contrasting with homely Oak, whose defects were patent to the blindest, and whose virtues were as metals in a mine.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd

“It was terribly beautiful to Tess today, for since her eyes last fell upon it she had learnt that the serpent hisses where the sweet birds sing.”

Thomas Hardy

Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

“Teach me to live, that I may dread
The grave as little as my bed.
Teach me to die…”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Source: Jude the Obscure

“You could sometimes see her twelfth year in her cheeks, or her ninth sparkling from her eyes; and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her mouth now and then.”

Thomas Hardy

Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

“When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often then not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.”

Thomas Hardy book A Pair of Blue Eyes

Source: A Pair of Blue Eyes

“A novel is an impression, not an argument.”

Thomas Hardy

Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

“The doctor says there are such boys springing up amongst us—boys of a sort unknown in the last generation—the outcome of new views of life. They seem to see all its terrors before they are old enough to have staying power to resist them. He says it is the beginning of the coming universal wish not to live.”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Jude the Obscure

“There's reason for ghastliness. Eustacia, you have held my happiness in the hollow of your hand, and like a devil you have dashed it down!”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

Bk. V, ch. 3
The Return of the Native (1878)

“These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.”

Thomas Hardy

Hap http://www.poetry-online.org/hardy_hap.htm" (1866), lines 13-14, from Wessex Poems (1898)

“"Justice" was done, and the President of the Immortals (in Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess. And the d'Urberville knights and dames slept on in their tombs unknowing. The two speechless gazers bent themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and remained thus a long time, absolutely motionless: the flag continued to wave silently. As soon as they had strength, they arose, joined hands again, and went on.”

Thomas Hardy book Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Phase the Seventh: Fulfilment, ch. LIX (last lines)
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891)

“For of all the miseries attaching to miserable love, the worst is the misery of thinking that the passion which is the cause of them all may cease.”

Thomas Hardy book A Pair of Blue Eyes

A Pair of Blue Eyes (1873), ch. 9

“So the baby was carried in a small deal box, under an ancient woman's shawl, to the churchyard that night, and buried by lantern-light, at the cost of a shilling and a pint of beer to the sexton, in that shabby corner of God's allotment where He lets the nettles grow, and where all unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards, suicides, and others of the conjecturally damned are laid.”

Thomas Hardy book Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Phase the Second: Maiden No More, ch. XIV
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891)

“Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons!”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Pt. VI, ch. III
Jude the Obscure (1895)

“[Of a wedding:] And so, standing before the aforesaid officiator, the two swore that at every other time of their lives till death took them, they would assuredly believe, feel, and desire precisely as they had believed, felt, and desired during the few preceding weeks. What was as remarkable as the undertaking itself was the fact that nobody seemed at all surprised at what they swore.”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Pt. I, ch. IX
Jude the Obscure (1895)

“My argument is that War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading.”

Thomas Hardy The Dynasts

Pt. II, sc. v, Spirit Sinister
The Dynasts (1904–1908)

“What of the Immanent Will and Its designs?
It works unconsciously, as heretofore,
Eternal artistries in Circumstance.”

Thomas Hardy The Dynasts

Pt. I, forescene, Shade of the Earth & Spirit of the Years
The Dynasts (1904–1908)

“The great inviolate place had an ancient permanence which the sea cannot claim. Who can say of a particular sea that it is old? Distilled by the sun, kneaded by the moon, it is renewed in a year, in a day, or in an hour. The sea changed, the fields changed, the rivers, the villages, and the people changed, yet Egdon remained.”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

Bk. I, ch. 1
The Return of the Native (1878)

“All that blooth means heavy autumn work for him and his hands.”

Thomas Hardy book The Woodlanders

Source: The Woodlanders (1887), Ch. XIX

“And meadow rivulets overflow,
And drops on gate bars hang in a row,
And rooks in families homeward go,
And so do I.”

Thomas Hardy

"Weathers", lines 15-18

“The rural world was not ripe for him. A man should be only partially before his time—to be completely to the vanward in aspirations is fatal to fame. Had Philip's warlike son been intellectually so far ahead as to have attempted civilization without bloodshed, he would have been twice the godlike hero that he seemed, but nobody would have heard of an Alexander.”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

Bk. III, ch. 2
The Return of the Native (1878)

“Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown.”

Thomas Hardy

" The Man He Killed http://www.illyria.com/hardyman.html" (1902), lines 17-20, from Time's Laughingstocks (1909)

“Or, to state his character as it stood in the scale of public opinion, when his friends and critics were in tantrums, he was considered rather a bad man; when they were pleased, he was rather a good man; when they were neither, he was a man whose moral colour was a kind of pepper-and-salt mixture.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), Ch. 1

“But nobody did come, because nobody does; and under the crushing recognition of his gigantic error Jude continued to wish himself out of the world.”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Pt. I, ch. IV
Jude the Obscure (1895)

“With all, the beautiful things of the earth become more dear as they elude pursuit; but with some natures utter elusion is the one special event which will make a passing love permanent for ever.”

Thomas Hardy

Desperate Remedies (1871), ch. 1

“A star looks down at me,
And says: "Here I and you
Stand each in our degree:
What do you mean to do,—
Mean to do?"”

Thomas Hardy

" Waiting Both http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Thomas_Hardy/9302, lines 1-5, from Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles (1925)

“In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.”

Thomas Hardy

"The Convergence of the Twain" (Lines on the loss of the Titanic) http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/916.html (1912), lines 1-3, from Satires of Circumstance (1914)

“When I set out for Lyonnesse,
A hundred miles away,
The rime was on the spray,
And starlight lit my lonesomeness.”

Thomas Hardy

" When I Set Out For Lyonnesse http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Thomas_Hardy/2736" (1870), lines 1-4, from Satires of Circumstance (1914)

“It was at present a place perfectly accordant with man's nature—neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly; neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame; but, like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony. As with some persons who have long lived apart, solitude seemed to look out of its countenance. It had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities.”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

Bk. I, ch. 1
The Return of the Native (1878)

“A local cult, called Christianity.”

Thomas Hardy The Dynasts

Pt. I, sc. vi, Spirit of the Years
The Dynasts (1904–1908)

“The sovereign brilliancy of Sirius pierced the eye with a steely glitter, the star called Capella was yellow, Aldebaran and Betelgueux shone with a fiery red. To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), Ch. 2

“They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined — just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around;
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.

Young Hodge the Drummer never knew —
Fresh from his Wessex home —
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.

Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge forever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow to some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellations reign
His stars eternally.”

Thomas Hardy

" Drummer Hodge http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_se/personal/pvm/HardyBWar/pracrit.html" (1899), lines 1-18, from Poems of the Past and Present (1901)