Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, OMwas an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, especially William Wordsworth. Charles Dickens was another important influence. Like Dickens, he was highly critical of much in Victorian society, though Hardy focused more on a declining rural society...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth2 June 1840
peace war reading
War makes good history but peace is poor reading.
dog heart loss
That one true heart was left behind! What feeling do we ever find, to equal among human kind , a dog's fidelity!
children views games
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.
firsts causes sage
The first cause worked automatically like a somnambulist, and not reflectively like a sage.
experience measurement should
Measurement of life should be proportioned rather to the intensity of the experience than to its actual length.
flesh faces oblivion
I am the family face; flesh perishes, I live on, projecting trait and trace through time to times anon, and leaping from place to place over oblivion.
reading matter argument
A novel is an impression, not an argument; and there the matter must rest.
men silence wonderful
That man's silence is wonderful to listen to.
acceptance path looks
If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst.
dance men fire
To dance with a man is to concentrate a twelvemonth's regulation fire upon him in the fragment of an hour. To pass to courtship without acquaintance, to pass to marriage without courtship, is a skipping of terms reserved for those alone who tread this royal road.
war good-war total-war
War makes rattling good history.
curves lines graves
...he seemed to approach the grave as an hyperbolic curve approaches a line, less directly as he got nearer, till it was doubtful if he would ever reach it at all.
eye littles tess-of-the-d-urbervilles
My eyes were dazed by you for a little, and that was all.
heart eye simple
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.