Thomas Hardy - Jude the Obscure (1895)

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But his dreams were as gigantic as his surroundings were small.

Thomas Hardy
But nobody did come, because nobody does; and under the crushing recognition of his gigantic error Jude continued to wish himself out of the world.

Thomas Hardy
Their lives were ruined, he thought; ruined by the fundamental error of their matrimonial union: that of having based a permanent contract on a temporary feeling which had no necessary connection with affinities that alone render a lifelong comradeship tolerable.

Thomas Hardy
Remember that the best and greatest among mankind are those who do themselves no worldly good. Every successful man is more or less a selfish man.

Thomas Hardy
He's charmed by her as if she were some fairy!" continued Arabella. "See how he looks round at her, and lets his eyes rest on her. I am inclined to think that she don't care for him quite so much as he does for her. She's not a particular warm-hearted creature to my thinking, though she cares for him pretty middling much— as much as she's able to; and he could make her heart ache a bit if he liked to try—which he's too simple to do.

Thomas Hardy
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
But sometimes a woman's love of being loved gets the better of her conscience.

Thomas Hardy
Teach me to live, that I may dread The grave as little as my bed. Teach me to die…

Thomas Hardy
Of a wedding:
And so, standing before the aforesaid officiator, the two swore that at every other time of their lives till death took them, they would assuredly believe, feel, and desire precisely as they had believed, felt, and desired during the few preceding weeks. What was as remarkable as the undertaking itself was the fact that nobody seemed at all surprised at what they swore.

Thomas Hardy
Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons.

Thomas Hardy
What at night had been perfect and ideal was by day the more or less defective real.

Thomas Hardy
You are absolutely the most ethereal, least sensual woman I ever knew to exist without inhuman sexlessness.

Thomas Hardy
Women are so strange in their influence that they tempt you to misplaced kindness.

Thomas Hardy
You are Joseph the dreamer of dreams, dear Jude. And a tragic Don Quixote. And sometimes you are St. Stephen, who, while they were stoning him, could see Heaven opened. Oh, my poor friend and comrade, you'll suffer yet!

Thomas Hardy
The first cause worked automatically like a somnambulist, and not reflectively like a sage.

Thomas Hardy