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
mind may tess-of-the-d-urbervilles
Did it never strike your mind that what every woman says, some women may feel?
exhibitions may painful
Of love it may be said, the less earthly the less demonstrative. In its absolutely indestructible form it reaches a profundity in which all exhibition of itself is painful.
often-is giving may
Some women's love of being loved is insatiable; and so, often, is their love of loving; and in the last case they may find that they can't give it continuously to the chamber-officer appointed by the bishop's license to receive it.
death fear may
Teach me to live, that I may dread The grave as little as my bed. Teach me to die…
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.
people goes-on may
People go on marrying because they can't resist natural forces, although many of them may know perfectly well that they are possibly buying a month's pleasure with a life's discomfort.
faith fire growing leaving march men night within
What of the faith and fire within us / Men who march away / Ere the barncocks say / Night is growing gray, / Leaving all that here can win us?
distance men
Why is it that a woman can see from a distance what a man cannot see close?
dawning next passing seemed somebody unknown
Who's in the next room? - who? / I seemed to see / Somebody in the dawning passing through,/ Unknown to me.
family flesh time trace trait
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.
afar air blessed cause ecstatic happy knew sound written
So little cause for carolings / Of such ecstatic sound / Was written on terrestrial things / Afar or nigh around, / That I could think there trembled through / His happy good-night air / Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew / And I was unaware.
listen silence wonderful
Silent? ah, he is silent! He can keep silence well. That man's silence is wonderful to listen to.
aims earth enjoy forth less loveliness might
Let me enjoy the earth no less Because the all-enacting Might Which fashioned forth its loveliness Had other aims than my delight.
bring far mass million pay peace priests sing thousand
Peace upon earth!' was said. We sing it, / And pay a million priests to bring it. / After two thousand years of mass / We've got as far as poison-gas.