“To find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable and expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability, induction — every kind of evidence in the logician's list — have united to persuade consciousness that it is quite in isolation.”

— Thomas Hardy, book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), Ch. 2

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Thomas Hardy171

English novelist and poet 1840–1928

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