“Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for its floor.”
Bk. I, ch. 1
The Return of the Native (1878)
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Thomas Hardy 171
English novelist and poet 1840–1928Related quotes

"Written Crossing the Yellow River to Qing-he" (渡河到清河作)

in interview with nl:Ischa Meyer, c. 1988
quote c. 1988 - from ('RM'), 157; p. 41
Karel Appel, a gesture of colour' (1992/2009)

“She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.”
St. X
Adonais (1821)
Context: Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise!
She knew not 'twas her own; as with no stain
She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.

Source: Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960), p. 99

“My whole life stretched out gloriously behind me.”
1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)
Context: When I had first caught sight of Matthew I saw the beauty in everything. Now I saw only ugliness and decay. All beauty was in the past. Again and again I wrote in poems, in notes, on scraps of paper. My whole life stretched out gloriously behind me. If I wrote that sick phrase once, I wrote it fifty times. And I believed it, too.