Thomas Hardy: Quotes about love

Thomas Hardy was English novelist and poet. Explore interesting quotes on love.
Thomas Hardy: 342 quotes23 likes

“I shall do one thing in this life - one thing certain - that is, love you, and long for you, and keep wanting you till I die.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd

“She was at that modulating point between indifference and love, at the stage called having a fancy for. It occurs once in the history of the most gigantic passions, and it is a period when they are in the hands of the weakest will.”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

Source: The Return of the Native

“Love is a possible strength, in an actual weakness. Marriage transforms a distraction into a support, the power of which should be, and happily often is, in direct proportion to the degree of imbecility it supplants.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), Ch. 4

“You have never loved me as I love you--never--never! Yours is not a passionate heart--your heart does not burn in a flame! You are, upon the whole, a sort of fay, or sprite-- not a woman!”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Source: Jude the Obscure

“She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, feared at tea-parties, hated in shops, and loved at crises.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd

“You overrate my capacity of love. I don't posess half the warmth of nature you believe me to have. An unprotected childhood in a cold world has beaten gentleness out of me.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd

“It may have been observed that there is no regular path for getting out
of love as there is for getting in. Some people look upon marriage as a
short cut that way, but it has been known to fail.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd

“To be loved to madness--such was her great desire. Love was to her the one cordial which could drive away the eating loneliness of her days. And she seemed to long for the abstraction called passionate love more than for any particular lover.”

Thomas Hardy

Source: Return of the Native

“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.”

Thomas Hardy

“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

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

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

Source: The Return of the Native

“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

“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

“It is commonly said that no man was ever converted by argument, but there is a single one which will make any Laodicean in England, let him be once love-sick, wear prayer-books and become a zealous Episcopalian – the argument that his sweetheart can be seen from his pew.”

Thomas Hardy

Desperate Remedies (1871), vol. 2, ch. 4

“Moreover she, and Clare also, stood as yet on the debatable land between predilection and love; where no profundities have been reached; no reflections have set in, awkwardly inquiring, "Whither does this new current tend to carry me? What does it mean to my future? How does it stand towards my past?"”

Thomas Hardy book Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Phase the Third: The Rally, ch. XX
Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891)

“See what deceits love sows in honest minds!”

Thomas Hardy book Two on a Tower

Two on a Tower (1882), vol 2, ch. 1 (Viviette Constantine speaking to Swithin St Cleeve)

“Sometimes a woman's love of being loved gets the better of her conscience, and though she is agonized at the thought of treating a man cruelly, she encourages him to love her while she doesn't love him at all. Then, when she sees him suffering, her remorse sets in, and she does what she can to repair the wrong.”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

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

“Her love was entire as a child’s, and though warm as summer it was fresh as spring.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far From The Madding Crowd