“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)

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Thomas Hardy 171

English novelist and poet 1840–1928

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Thomas Hardy 171

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