“The rural world was not ripe for him. A man should be only partially before his time—to be completely to the vanward in aspirations is fatal to fame. Had Philip's warlike son been intellectually so far ahead as to have attempted civilization without bloodshed, he would have been twice the godlike hero that he seemed, but nobody would have heard of an Alexander.”

— Thomas Hardy , book The Return of the Native

Bk. III, ch. 2
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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