Thomas Hardy Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Thomas Hardy's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Novelist Thomas Hardy's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 174 quotes on this page collected since June 2, 1840! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
  • If the story-tellers could ha' got decency and good morals from true stories, who'd have troubled to invent parables?

    Thomas Hardy (2014). “Thomas Hardy: Selected Prose, Volume I”, p.65, Anthem Press
  • Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honor as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity.

    Real   People   Honor  
  • My weakness has always been to prefer the large intention of an unskilful artist to the trivial intention of an accomplished one: in other words, I am more interested in the high ideas of a feeble executant than in the high execution of a feeble thinker.

    Writing   Artist   Ideas  
    Thomas Hardy (2007). “Thomas Hardy”, p.319, Wordsworth Editions
  • That aspects are within us; and who seems Most kingly is the King.

    Kings   Royalty   Aspect  
    "The Collected Poems of Thomas Hardy".
  • Tis because we be on a blighted star, and not a sound one, isn't it Tess?

    Stars   Sound   Tess  
    Thomas Hardy (2007). “Tess of the d'Urbervilles - Second Edition”, p.65, Broadview Press
  • But nothing is more insidious than the evolution of wishes from mere fancies, and of wants from mere wishes.

    Wish   Want   Fancy  
    Thomas Hardy (2016). “The Mayor of Casterbridge”, p.120, Thomas Hardy
  • It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.

    Men   Feelings   Language  
    'Far from the Madding Crowd' (1874) ch. 81
  • This hobble of being alive is rather serious, don’t you think so?

    Thomas Hardy (2016). “Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman”, p.151, Thomas Hardy
  • You, and those like you, take your fill of pleasure on earth by making the life of such as me bitter and black with sorrow; and then it is a fine thing, when you have had enough of that, to think of securing your pleasure in heaven by becoming converted!

    Thinking   Heaven   Black  
    Thomas Hardy (2016). “Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman”, p.374, Thomas Hardy
  • Everybody must be managed. Queens must be managed. Kings must be managed, for men want managing almost as much as women, and that's saying a good deal.

    Kings   Queens   Men  
    Thomas Hardy (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)”, p.484, Delphi Classics
  • Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.

    Thomas Hardy (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)”, p.1305, Delphi Classics
  • Measurement of life should be proportioned rather to the intensity of the experience than to its actual length.

    Thomas Hardy (1873). “A Pair of Blue Eyes”, p.273
  • A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all.

    Love   Heart   Discretion  
    Hand of Ethelberta (1876) ch. 20
  • My eyes were dazed by you for a little, and that was all.

    Thomas Hardy (2016). “Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Diversion Classics)”, p.95, Diversion Books
  • Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them.

    Moral   Argument   Poet  
    Thomas Hardy (2016). “The Hand Of Ethelberta”, p.26, Thomas Hardy
  • The first cause worked automatically like a somnambulist, and not reflectively like a sage.

    Sage   Firsts   Causes  
    Thomas Hardy (1999). “Jude the Obscure”, p.19, Broadview Press
  • He Looked and smelt like Autumn's very brother, his face being sunburnt to wheat-colour, his eyes blue as corn-flowers, his sleeves and leggings dyed with fruit-stains, his hands clammy with the sweet juice of apples, his hat sprinkled with pips, and everywhere about him the sweet atmosphere of cider which at its first return each season has such an indescribable fascination for those who have been born and bred among the orchards.

    Sweet   Brother   Flower  
    Thomas Hardy (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)”, p.7755, Delphi Classics
  • ...the figure near at hand suffers on such occasions, because it shows up its sorriness without shade; while vague figures afar off are honored, in that their distance makes artistic virtues of their stains. In considering what Tess was not, he overlooked what she was, and forgot that the defective can be more than the entire.

    Thomas Hardy (1995). “Thomas Hardy: Three Great Novels”, JG Press
  • Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness.

    Emily Brontë, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Charlotte Brontë (2016). “Classic British Love Stories: Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, Far from the Madding Crowd, and Jane Eyre”, p.680, Open Road Media
  • There's a friendly tie of some sort between music and eating.

    Music   Ties   Friendly  
    Thomas Hardy (2016). “Under the Greenwood Tree: Works of Hardy”, p.44, 谷月社
  • If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst.

  • Their position was perhaps the happiest of all positions in the social scale, being above the line at which neediness ends, and below the line at which the convenances begin to cramp natural feeling, and the stress of threadbare modishness makes too little of enough.

    Stress   Feelings   Lines  
    Thomas Hardy (2016). “Tess of the d'Ubervilles”, p.130, Xist Publishing
  • Give the enemy not only a road for flight, but also a means of defending it.

    Mean   Giving   Enemy  
  • Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

    Thomas Hardy (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)”, p.3633, Delphi Classics
  • It was that period in the vernal quarter when we may suppose the Dryads to be waking for the season. The vegetable world begins to move and swell and the saps to rise, till in the completest silence of lone gardens and trackless plantations, where everything seems helpless and still after the bond and slavery of frost, there are bustlings, strainings, united thrusts, and pulls-all-together, in comparison with which the powerful tugs of cranes and pulleys in a noisy city are but pigmy efforts.

    Thomas Hardy (2016). “FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD (British Classics Series): Historical Romance Novel”, p.119, e-artnow
  • There is always an inertia to be overcome in striking out a new line of conduct – not more in ourselves, it seems, than in circumscribing events, which appear as if leagued together to allow no novelties in the way of amelioration.

    Together   Events   Lines  
    Thomas Hardy (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)”, p.1161, Delphi Classics
  • That cold accretion called the world, so terrible in the mass, is so non formidable, even pitiable, in its units.

    World   Earth   Cold  
  • Well, these sad and hopeless obstacles are welcome in one sense, for they enable us to look with indifference upon the cruel satires that Fate loves to indulge in.

    Fate   Indulge In   Looks  
    Thomas Hardy (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)”, p.1758, Delphi Classics
  • 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. The devoted fail.

    Thomas Hardy (2016). “Jude the Obscure: Works of Hardy”, p.324, 谷月社
  • - the ethereal, fine-nerved, sensitive girl, quite unfitted by temperament and instinct to fulfil the conditions of the matrimonial relation with Phillotson, possibly with scarce any man.

    Girl   Men   Sensitive  
    Thomas Hardy (2016). “JUDE THE OBSCURE (British Classics Series): Historical Romance Novel”, p.190, e-artnow
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  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 174 quotes from the Novelist Thomas Hardy, starting from June 2, 1840! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!