Thomas Hardy - Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891)

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The two forces were at work here as everywhere, the inherent will to enjoy, and the circumstantial will against enjoyment.

Thomas Hardy
Another year's installment of flowers, leaves, nightingales, thrushes, finches, and such ephemeral creatures, took up their positions where only a year ago others had stood in their place when these were nothing more than germs and inorganic particles.

Thomas Hardy
As they crept along, stooping low to discern the plant, a soft yellow gleam was reflected from the buttercups into their shaded faces, giving them an elfish, moonlit aspect, though the sun was pouring upon their backs in all the strength of noon.

Thomas Hardy
Did it never strike your mind that what every woman says, some women may feel?

Thomas Hardy
Ladies know what to guard against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks…

Thomas Hardy
Moreover she, and Clare also, stood as yet on the debatable land between predilection and love; where no profundities have been reached; no reflections have set in, awkwardly inquiring, "Whither does this new current tend to carry me? What does it mean to my future? How does it stand towards my past?"

Thomas Hardy
The beauty or ugliness of a character lay not only in its achievements, but in its aims and impulses; its true history lay, not among things done, but among things willed.

Thomas Hardy
I want to question my belief, so that what is left after I have questioned it, will be even stronger.

Thomas Hardy
So the baby was carried in a small deal box, under an ancient woman's shawl, to the churchyard that night, and buried by lantern-light, at the cost of a shilling and a pint of beer to the sexton, in that shabby corner of God's allotment where He lets the nettles grow, and where all unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards, suicides, and others of the conjecturally damned are laid.

Thomas Hardy
"How can I pray for you," she said, "when I am forbidden to believe that the great Power who moves the world would alter His plans on my account?"

Thomas Hardy
If an offense come out of the truth, better is it that the offense come than that the truth be concealed.

Thomas Hardy
"Justice" was done, and the President of the Immortals (in Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess. And the d'Urberville knights and dames slept on in their tombs unknowing. The two speechless gazers bent themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and remained thus a long time, absolutely motionless: the flag continued to wave silently. As soon as they had strength, they arose, joined hands again, and went on.

Thomas Hardy
Considering his position he became wonderfully free from the chronic melancholy which is taking hold of the civilized races with the decline of belief in a beneficent Power.

Thomas Hardy
I agree to the conditions, Angel; because you know best what my punishment ought to be; only - only - don't make it more than I can bear!

Thomas Hardy
Beauty lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized.

Thomas Hardy
Patience, that blending of moral courage with physical timidity.

Thomas Hardy
Don't think of what's past!" said she. "I am not going to think outside of now. Why should we! Who knows what tomorrow has in store?

Thomas Hardy
She had been made to break an accepted social law, but no law known to the environment in which she fancied herself such an anomaly.

Thomas Hardy
Why didn't you tell me there was danger? Why didn't you warn me? Ladies know what to guard against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks; but I never had the chance of discovering in that way; and you did not help me!

Thomas Hardy
She had no fear of the shadows; her sole idea seemed to be to shun mankind — or rather that cold accretion called the world, which, so terrible in the mass, is so unformidable, even pitiable, in its units.

Thomas Hardy
A strong woman who recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.

Thomas Hardy