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
world earth cold
That cold accretion called the world, so terrible in the mass, is so non formidable, even pitiable, in its units.
lonely loneliness oxen
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. "Now they are all on their knees," An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearth-side ease. We pictured the meek mild creatures where They dwelt in their strawy pen, Nor did it occur to one of us there To doubt they were kneeling then. So fair a fancy few would weave In these years! yet, I feel If someone said on Christmas Eve, "Come; see the oxen kneel, In the lonely barton by yonder coomb Our childhood used to know," I should go with him in the gloom, Hoping it might be so.
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!
women believe listening
Women are attracted to silent men. They believe they are listening.
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.
powerful spring moving
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.
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.