When you've made up your mind to marry, take the first respectable body that comes to hand - she's as good as any other; they be all alike in groundwork: 'tis only in the flourishes there's a difference.

— Thomas Hardy

When you've made up your mind to marry, take the first respectable body that comes to hand-she's as good as any other; they'll be all alike in the groundwork; 'tis only in the flourishes there's a difference.

— Thomas Hardy

Yet her experience had consisted less in a series of pure disappointments than in a series of substitutions. Continually it had happened that what she had desired had not been granted her, and that what had been granted her she had not desired. So she viewed with an approach to equanimity the now cancelled days when Donald had been her undeclared lover, and wondered what unwished-for thing Heaven might send her in place of him.

— Thomas Hardy

You are absolutely the most ethereal, least sensual woman I ever knew to exist without inhuman selflessness.

— Thomas Hardy

You can do anything with bayonets except sit on them.

— Thomas Hardy

You concede nothing to me and I have to concede everything to you.

— Thomas Hardy

You don't talk quite like a girl who has had no advantages.

— Thomas Hardy

You have never loved me as I love you--never--never! Yours is not a passionate heart--your heart does not burn in a flame! You are, upon the whole, a sort of fay, or sprite-- not a woman!

— Thomas Hardy

You know, mistress, that I love you, and shall love you always

— Thomas Hardy

You ride well, but you don't kiss nicely at all.

— Thomas Hardy