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?
stars sound tess
Tis because we be on a blighted star, and not a sound one, isn't it Tess?
pieces tess-of-the-d-urbervilles pity
O, you have torn my life all to pieces... made me be what I prayed you in pity not to make me be again!
tess-of-the-d-urbervilles tricks novel
Ladies know what to guard against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks…
eye littles tess-of-the-d-urbervilles
My eyes were dazed by you for a little, and that was all.
simplicity bless tess
Bless thy simplicity, Tess
strength strong-women tess-of-the-d-urbervilles
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.
tess-of-the-d-urbervilles lays
Beauty lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized.
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.