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

He is a sort of steady man in a wild way, you know. That’s better than to be as some are, wild in a steady way. I am afraid that’s how I am

The time seems near, if it has not actually arrived, when the chastened sublimity of a moor, a sea, or a mountain will be all of nature that is absolutely in keeping with the moods of the more thinking among mankind

The floating pollen seemed to be his notes made visible, and the dampness of the garden the weeping of the garden’s sensibility

No average man will molest a woman by day or night, at home or abroad, unless she invites him. Until she says by a look “Come on” he is always afraid to, and if you never say it, or look it, he never comes

He had been held to her by a beautiful thread which it pained him to spoil by breaking, rather than by a chain he could not break

The pair were, in truth, but the ashes of their former fires. To the hot sorrow of the previous night had succeeded heaviness; it seemed as if nothing could kindle either of them to fervour of sensation any more

By experience,” says Roger Ascham, “we find out a short way by a long wandering

Very well,” said Oak, firmly, with the bearing of one who was going to give his days and nights to Ecclesiastes for ever

He had sunk from his modest elevation as pastoral king into the very slime pits of Siddim; but there was left to him a dignified calm he had never before known, and that indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not. And thus the abasement had been exaltation, and the loss gain

He admired her so much that he used to light the candle three times a night to look at her

She went stealthily as a cat through this profusion of growth, gathering cuckoo-spittle on her skirts, cracking snails that were underfoot, staining her hands with thistle-milk and slug-slime, and rubbing off upon her naked arms sticky blights which, though snow-white on the apple-tree trunks, made madder stains on her skin; thus she drew quite near to Clare, still unobserved of him

What was the past to me as soon as I met you? It was a dead thing altogether. I became another woman, filled full of new life from you. How could I be the early one? Why do you not see this? Dear, if you would only be a little more conceited, and believe in yourself so far as to see that you was strong enough to work this change in me, you would perhaps be in a mind to come to me, your poor wife

She suddenly thought one afternoon, when looking in the glass at her fairness, that there was yet another date, of greater importance to her than those; that of her own death, when all these charms would have disappeared; a day which lay sly and unseen and among all the other days of the year, giving no sign or sound when she annually passed over it; but not the less surely there. When was it? Why did she not feel the chill of each yearly encounter with such a cold relation?

Those who have the power of reproaching in silence may find it a means more effective than words. 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

Do I realize solemnly enough how utterly and irretrievably this little womanly thing is the creature of my good or bad faith and fortune? I think not. I think I could not, unless I were a woman myself. What I am in worldly estate, she is. What I become, she must become. What I cannot be, she cannot be. And shall I ever neglect her, or hurt her, or even forget to consider her? God forbid such a crime!

The trees have inquisitive eyes, haven’t they? -that is, seem as if they had. And the river says,-‘Why do ye trouble me with your looks?’ And you seem to see numbers of to-morrows just all in a line, the first of them the biggest and clearest, the others getting smaller and smaller as they stand further away; but they all seem very fierce and cruel and as if they said, ‘I’m coming! Beware of me! Beware of me!

To find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable and expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability, induction – every kind of evidence in the logician’s list – have united to persuade consciousness that it is quite alone

But since ’tis as ’tis, why, it might have been worse, and I feel my thanks accordingly

War makes rattling good history

The only exercise that Tess took at this time was after dark; and it was then, when out in the woods, that she seemed least solitary… She had no fear of the shadows; her sole idea seemed to be to shun mankind – or rather that cold accretion called the world, which, so terrible in the mass, is so unformideable, even pitiable, in its units

She had been made to break an accepted social law, but no law known to the environment in which she fancied herself such an anomaly.

And yet you take away the one little ewe-lamb of pleasure that I have in this dull life of mine. Well, perhaps generosity is not a woman’s most marked characteristic

And from a quiet modesty that would have become a vestal, which seemed continually to impress upon him that he had no great claim on the world’s room, Oak walked unassumingly and with a faintly perceptible bend, yet distinct from a bowing of the shoulders

The resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible

You are nothing to me – nothing,” said Troy, heartlessly. “A ceremony before a priest doesn’t make a marriage. I am not morally yours

In heaven she will probably sit between the Heloises and the Cleopatras

She was in person full-limbed and somewhat heavy; without ruddiness, as without pallor; and soft to the touch as a cloud. To see her hair was to fancy that a whole winter did not contain darkness enough to form its shadow: it closed over her forehead like nightfall extinguishing the western glow

This good-fellowship – camaraderie – usually occurring through similarity of pursuits, is unfortunately seldom superadded to love between the sexes, because men and women associate, not in their labours, but in their pleasures merely.

She looked towards the western sky, which was now aglow like some vast foundry wherein new worlds were cast

In considering what Tess was not, he overlooked that she was, and forgot that the defective can more than the entire

She was but a transient impression, half forgotten

Henchard, like all his kind, was superstitious, and he could not help thinking that the concatenation of events this evening had produced was the scheme of some sinister intelligence bent on punishing him

I have seen your mother; and I will never see her again!

O no. You should lift Marian! Such a lump. You are like an undulating billow warmed by the sun. And all this fluff of muslin about you is the froth

Such miserable creatures of circumstance are we all!

They were as sublime as the moon and stars above them, and the moon ans stars were as ardent as they

Sheer experience had already taught her that in some circumstances there was one thing better than to lead a good life, and that was to be saved from leading any life whatever.

Humanity appears upon the scene, hand in hand with trouble.

To speak like a book I once read, wet weather is the narrative, and fine days are the episodes, of our country’s history;

The rain stretched obliquely through the dull atmosphere in liquid spines, unbroken in continuity between their beginnings in the clouds and their points in him.

Perfect, he, as a lover, might have called them off-hand. But no – they were not perfect. and it was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity

Enough that in the present case, as in millions, it was not the two halves of a perfect whole that confronted each other at the perfect moment; a missing counterpart wandered independently about the earth waiting in crass obtuseness till the late time came

Ah, if I could only make your dear heart ache one little minute of each day as mine does every day and all day long, it might lead you to show pity to your poor lonely one.

You could sometimes see her twelfth year in her cheeks, or her ninth sparkling from her eyes; and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her mouth now and then

I thought you were the ghost of yourself

I have danced at your skittish heels, my beautiful Bathsheba, for many a long mile and many a long day

I have nobody in the world to fight my battles for me; but no mercy is shown. Yet if a thousand of you sneer and say things against me, I will not be put down!

The best fiction is truer than history.

The cow and horse tracks in the road were full of water, the rain having been enough to charge them, but not enough to wash them away. Across these minute pools the reflected stars flitted in a quick transit as she passed; she would not have known they were shining overhead if she had not seen them there – the vastest things of the universe imaged in objects so mean

Judge me by my future works.

I have understanding as well as you; I am not inferior to you: yea, who knoweth not such things as these?

He could in this way be one thing and seem another: for instance, he could speak of love and think of dinner: call on the husband to look at the wife: be eager to pay and intend to owe

But nobody did come, because nobody does;

We ought to have lived in mental communion, and no more

The reason of that is,” she said eagerly, “that he goes in privately by the old tower door, just when the service commences, and sits at the back of the gallery. He told me so.” This supreme instance of Troy’s goodness fell upon Gabriel ears like the thirteenth stroke of crazy clock. It was not only received with utter incredulity as regarded itself, but threw a doubt on all the assurances that had preceded it

The luminary was a golden-haired, beaming, mild-eyed, God-like creature, gazing down in the vigour and intentness of youth upon an earth that was brimming with interest for him

Like all people who have known rough times, light-heartedness seemed to her too irrational and inconsequent to be indulged in except as a reckless dram now and then; for she had been too early habituated to anxious reasoning to drop the habit suddenly… Her triumph was tempered by circumspection, she had still that field-mouse fear of the coulter of destiny despite fair promise, which is common among the thoughtful who have suffered early from poverty and oppression

Truth like a bastard comes into the world Never without ill-fame to him who gives her birth

There is a loquacity that tells nothing, which was Bathsheba’s; and there is a silence which says much: that was Gabriel’s

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

Many of her thoughts were perfect syllogisms; unluckily they always remained thoughts. Only a few were irrational assumptions; but, unfortunately, they were the ones which most frequently grew into deeds

Fancies find room in the strongest minds. Here, in a churchyard old as civilization, in the worst of weathers, was a strange woman of curious fascinations never seen elsewhere: there might be some devilry about her presence

Fancies find room in the strongest minds. Here, in a churchyard old as civilization, in the worst of weathers, was a strange woman of curious fascinations never seen elsewhere: there might be some devilry about her presence

Mrs. d’Urberville was not the first mother compelled to love her offspring resentfully, and to be bitterly fond

Tess and Clare unconsciously studied each other, ever balanced on the edge of a passion, yet apparently keeping out of it. All the while they were converging, under an irresistible law, as surely as two streams in one vale

In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving. Nature does not often say ‘See!’ to her poor creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply ‘Here!’ to a body’s cry of ‘Where?’ till the hide-and-seek has become an irksome outworn game

I am the family face; flesh perishes, I live on

Rolliver’s inn, the single alehouse at this end of the long and broken village, could only boast of an off-licence; hence, as nobody could legally drink on the premises, the amount of overt accommodation for consumers was strictly limited to a little board.

It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession; with totally differing aims the method is the same on both sides. But the understood incentive on the woman’s part was wanting here. Besides, Bathsheba’s position as absolute mistress of a farm and house was a novel one, and the novelty had not yet begun to wear off

Deeds of endurance, which seem ordinary in philosophy, are rare in conduct

Why should a man’s mind have been thrown into such close, sad, sensational, inexplicable relations with such a precarious object as his body?

After wearing and wasting her palpitating heart with every engine of regret that lonely inexperience could devise, common sense had illumined her. She felt that she would do well to be useful again – to taste anew sweet independence at any price. The past was past; whatever it had been, it was no more at hand. Whatever its consequences, time would close over them

There are men whose hearts insist upon a dogged fidelity to some image or cause thrown by chance into their keeping, long after their judgment has pronounced it no rarity – even the reverse, indeed, and without them the band of the worthy is incomplete

But the bitter thing is, that when I was rich I didn’t need what I could have, and now I be poor I can’t have what I need!

Tess was awake before dawn – at the marginal minute of the dark when the grove is still mute, save for one prophetic bird who sings with a clear-voiced conviction that he at least knows the correct time of day, the rest preserving silence as if equally convinced that he is mistaken

Having begun to love you, I love you for ever – in all changes, in all disgraces, because you are yourself

I forgot the defective can be more than the whole

Your eyes are to be my stars for the future

All the while they were converging, under an irresistible law, as surely as two streams in one vale

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

Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons

Is a woman a thinking unit at all, or a fraction always wanting its integer?

The best is not to remember that your nature and your past doings have been just like thousands’ and thousands’, and that your coming life and doings ‘ll be like thousands’s and thousands

Beauty to her, as to all who have felt, lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized.

December morning – sunny and exceedingly mild – might have regarded Gabriel

That cold accretion called the world, so terrible in the mass, is so non formidable, even pitiable, in its units

And so, standing before the aforesaid officiator, the two swore that at every other time of their lives till death took them, they would assuredly believe, feel, and desire precisely as they had believed, felt, and desired during the few preceding weeks. What was as remarkable as the undertaking itself was the fact that nobody seemed at all surprised at what they swore

It may have been observed that there is no regular path for getting out of love as there is for getting in

It was Wisdom in the abstract facing Folly in the concrete

You could see the skeleton behind the man, and almost the ghost behind the skeleton