Thomas Hardy Quotes

"I was court-martial in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Death, Absence, Court)

"A woman would rather visit her own grave than the place where she has been young and beautiful after she is aged and ugly."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Grave, Ugly, Visit, Woman)

"I am the family face; flesh perishes, I live on."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Family)

"If way to the better there be, it exacts a full look at the worst."
- Thomas Hardy

"Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Business, Vision, Completion, Leaders)

"Give the enemy not only a road for flight, but also a means of defending it."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Enemy, Road)

"If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: World)

"Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honor as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: People, Care, Honor, Obscurity)

"Dialect words are those terrible marks of the beast to the truly genteel."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Words)

"Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons."
- Thomas Hardy

"And yet to every bad there is a worse."
- Thomas Hardy

"A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Evil, Resolution)

"A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Indiscretion)

"It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Men, Feelings, Language, Woman)

"Aspect are within us, and who seems most kingly is king."
- Thomas Hardy

"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."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Eye, Moods, Pain, Sound, Tongue)

"Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Success, Constitution, Practice)

"You was a good man, and did good things."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Man)

"You can do anything with bayonets except sit on them."
- Thomas Hardy

"Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down you'd treat if met where any bar is, or help to half-a-crown."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: War, Help)

"There is a condition worse than blindness, and that is, seeing something that isn't there."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Blindness)

"The value of old age depends upon the person who reaches it. To some men of early performance it is useless. To others, who are late to develop, it just enables them to finish the job."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Age, Men, Performance, Job, Old, Value)

"The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Hope, Disappointment, Fulfillment)

"The sky was clear - remarkably clear - and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Body, Sky, Stars)

"The resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Evil, Resolution)

"The offhand decision of some commonplace mind high in office at a critical moment influences the course of events for a hundred years."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Decision, Events, Mind, Office, Years)

"Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Argument, Custom, Manners, Morals, Poets)

"Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Change, Time)

"Cruelty is the law pervading all nature and society; and we can't get out of it if we would."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Nature, Society, Cruelty, Law)

"My opinion is that a poet should express the emotion of all the ages and the thought of his own."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Thought, Emotion, Opinion)

"No one can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Pleasure, Profit)

"My argument is that War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Peace, War, History, Argument, Poor, Reading)

"Patience, that blending of moral courage with physical timidity."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Courage, Patience, Timidity)

"Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Art, Poetry, Nature, Emotion, Measure)

"Some folk want their luck buttered."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Folk, Luck, Want)

"That man's silence is wonderful to listen to."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Man, Silence)

"The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him."
- Thomas Hardy
(Related: Religion, Heaven, Man)