Thomas Hardy Quotes - Page 2

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.

If we be doomed to marry, we marry; if we be doomed to remain single we do.

There's a friendly tie of some sort between music and eating.

Pessimism is playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you can never be disappointed. Having reckoned what to do in the worst possible circumstances, when better arise, as they may, life becomes child's play.

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

We colour and mould according to the wants within us whatever our eyes bring in.

Women accept their destiny more readily than men.

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.

It is rarely that the pleasures of the imagination will compensate for the pain of sleeplessness.

A woman would rather visit her own grave than the place where she has been young and beautiful after she is aged and ugly.

...our impulses are too strong for our judgement sometimes

There are accents in the eye which are not on the tongue, and more tales come from pale lips than can enter an ear. It is both the grandeur and the pain of the remoter moods that they avoid the pathway of sound.

When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often then not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.

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

Silence has sometimes a remarkable power of showing itself as the disembodied soul of feeling wandering without its carcase, and it is then more impressive than speech.

It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.

Give the enemy not only a road for flight, but also a means of defending it.

That man's silence is wonderful to listen to.

The beggarly question of parentage--what is it, after all? What does it matter, when you come to think of it, whether a child is yours by blood or not? All the little ones of our time are collectively the children of us adults of the time, and entitled to our general care. That excessive regard of parents for their own children, and their dislike of other people's, is, like class-feeling, patriotism, save-your-own-soul-ism, and other virtues, a mean exclusiveness at bottom.

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

If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone.

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

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?

You have never loved me as I love you--never--never! Yours is not a passionate heart--your heart does not burn in a flame! You are, upon the whole, a sort of fay, or sprite-- not a woman!

So each had a private little sun for her soul to bask in; some dream, some affection, some hobby, or at least some remote and distant hope.