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
fate men doe
Indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not.
writing artist ideas
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.
selfish successful men
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...
truth-is offense ifs
If an offense come out of the truth, better is it that the offense come than that the truth be concealed.
husband men wife
It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession
men heaven religion
The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him.
angel punishment bears
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!
thinking serious alive
This hobble of being alive is rather serious, don’t you think so?
knowing sometimes knows
Sometimes I shrink from your knowing what I have felt for you, and sometimes I am distressed that all of it you will never know.
may example stories
I may do some good before I am dead--be a sort of success as a frightful example of what not to do; and so illustrate a moral story.
pain eye ears
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.
cutting people looks
It may have been observed that there is no regular path for getting out of love as there is for getting in. Some people look upon marriage as a short cut that way, but it has been known to fail.
pain drama episodes
Happiness is but a mere episode in the general drama of pain.
beautiful sweet eye
It was terribly beautiful to Tess today, for since her eyes last fell upon it she had learnt that the serpent hisses where the sweet birds sing.