A blaze of love and extinction, was better than a lantern glimmer of the same which should last long years.

— Thomas Hardy

A half knowledge of another's life mostly does injustice to the life unknown.

— Thomas Hardy

Ah, dear Jude; that's because you are like a totally deaf man observing people listening to music. You say 'What are they regarding? Nothing is there.' But something is.

— Thomas Hardy

All laughing comes from misapprehension. Rightly looked at there is no laughable thing under the sun.

— Thomas Hardy

All the while she wondered if any strange good thing might come of her being in her ancestral land; and some spirit within her rose automatically as the sap in the twigs. It was unexpected youth, surging up anew after its temporary check, and bringing with it hope, and the invincible instinct towards self-delight.

— Thomas Hardy

A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all.

— Thomas Hardy

Altogether he was one in whom no man would have seen anything to admire, and in whom no woman would have seen anything to dislike.

— Thomas Hardy

Always wanting another man than your own.

— Thomas Hardy

An average woman is in this superior to an average man—that she never instigates, only responds.

— Thomas Hardy

And all this while the subtle-fouled girl asking herself why she was born, why sitting in a room, and blinking at the candle; why things around her had taken the shape they wore in preference to every other possible shape.

— Thomas Hardy