Thomas Hardy: Woman

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

“A strong woman who recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.”

Thomas Hardy

Variant: When a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.
Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

“Why is it that a woman can see from a distance what a man cannot see close?”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

Source: The Return of the Native

“To dwell on a heath without studying its meanings was like wedding a foreigner without learning his tongue. The subtle beauties of the heath were lost to Eustacia; she only caught its vapours. An environment which would have made a contented woman a poet, a suffering woman a devotee, a pious woman a psalmist, even a giddy woman thoughtful, made a rebellious woman saturnine.”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

Bk. I, ch. 7
The Return of the Native (1878)

“It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), Ch. 51

“Did it never strike your mind that what every woman says, some women may feel?”

Thomas Hardy

Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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)

“Here by the baring bough
Raking up leaves,
Often I ponder how
Springtime deceives,—
I, an old woman now,
Raking up leaves.”

Thomas Hardy

" Autumn in King's Hintock Park http://www.naic.edu/~gibson/poems/hardy2.html" (1901), lines 1-6, from Time's Laughingstocks (1909)

“How bewitched I was! How could there be any good in a woman that everybody spoke ill of?”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

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

“Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.”

Thomas Hardy

Source: " The Voice http://www.portablepoetry.com/poems/thomas_hardy/the_voice.html" (1912), lines 1-4, from Satires of Circumstance (1914)

“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)