Thomas Hardy: Thing

“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

Love , Life

“Beauty lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized.”

Thomas Hardy

Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Beauty

“The beauty or ugliness of a character lay not only in its achievements, but in its aims and impulses; its true history lay, not among things done, but among things willed.”

Thomas Hardy

Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Beauty , History

“The business of the poet and the novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things.”

Thomas Hardy

Business

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

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Pt. VI, ch. III
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

Love , Beauty , Nature

“And all her shining keys will be took from her, and her cupboards opened; and little things a' didn't wish seen, anybody will see; and her wishes and ways will all be as nothing!”

Thomas Hardy book The Mayor of Casterbridge

Source: The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Ch. 18

Way

“The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank blooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen.”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

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

Sleep , Appearance

“The heath and changes of weather were quite blotted out from their eyes for the present. They were enclosed in a sort of luminous mist, which hid from them surroundings of any inharmonious colour, and gave to all things the character of light. When it rained they were charmed, because they could remain indoors together all day with such a show of reason; when it was fine they were charmed, because they could sit together on the hills. They were like those double stars which revolve round and round each other, and from a distance appear to be one.”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

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

Star , Light , Appearance , Change

“When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,
And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,
"He was a man who used to notice such things?"”

Thomas Hardy

" Afterwards http://www.web-books.com/Classics/Poetry/Anthology/Hardy/Afterwards.htm", lines 1-4, from Moments of Vision (1917)

“When false things are brought low,
And swift things have grown slow,
Feigning like froth shall go,
Faith be for aye.”

Thomas Hardy

" Between Us Now, http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/between-us-now/" lines 21-24, from Poems of the Past and Present (1901)

Faith , Falseness

“Whence comes solace? Not from seeing,
What is doing, suffering, being;
Not from noting Life’s conditions,
Not from heeding Time’s monitions;
But in cleaving to the Dream
And in gazing at the Gleam
Whereby gray things golden seem.”

Thomas Hardy

" On a Fine Morning http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Thomas_Hardy/16443" (1899), lines 1-7, from Poems of the Past and Present (1901)

Life , Dreams , Suffering , Time

“An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.”

Thomas Hardy

"The Darkling Thrush", lines 21-32

Age , Hope , Soul , Thinking