Quotes From "Far From The Madding Crowd" By Thomas Hardy

Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness.
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Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness. Thomas Hardy
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Bathsheba loved Troy in the way that only self-reliant women love when they abandon their self-reliance. When a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman who has never any strength to throw away. One source of her inadequacy is the novelty of the occasion. She has never had practice in making the best of such a condition. Weakness is doubly weak by being new. Thomas Hardy
It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings...
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It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs. Thomas Hardy
She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers...
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She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, feared at tea-parties, hated in shops, and loved at crises. Thomas Hardy
When a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength she...
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When a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away. Thomas Hardy
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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 Thomas Hardy
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This good fellowship - camaraderie - usually occurring through the similarity of pursuits is unfortunately seldom super-added to love between the sexes, because men and women associate, not in their labors but in their pleasures merely. Where, however, happy circumstances permit its development, the compounded feeling proves itself to be the only love which is strong as death - that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, besides which the passion usually called by the name is as evanescent as steam. Thomas Hardy
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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. Thomas Hardy
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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. Thomas Hardy
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He was moderately truthful towards men, but to women lied like a Cretan-a system of ethics above all others calculated to win popularity at the first flush of admission into lively society. Thomas Hardy
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We colour and mould according to the wants within us whatever our eyes bring in. Thomas Hardy
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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. Thomas Hardy
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When the love-led man had ceased from his labours Bathsheba came and looked him in the face.' Gabriel, will you you stay on with me?' she said, smiling winningly, and not troubling to bring her lips quite together again at the end, because there was going to be another smile soon.' I will, ' said Gabriel.And she smiled on him again. Thomas Hardy
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But you are too lovely even to care to be kind as others are. Thomas Hardy
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Kiss my foot, sir; my face is for mouths of consequence. Thomas Hardy
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When I want a broad-minded opinion for general enlightenment, distinct from special advice, I never go to a man who deals in the subject professionally. So I like the parson's opinion on law, the lawyer's on doctoring, the doctor's on business, and my business-man's .. . on morals. Thomas Hardy
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It may have been observed that there is no regular path for getting outof love as there is for getting in. Some people look upon marriage as ashort cut that way, but it has been known to fail. Thomas Hardy
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You know, mistress, that I love you, and shall love you always Thomas Hardy
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To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world is almost a palpable movement. To enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night, and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilized mankind, who are diregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars. Thomas Hardy
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There is always an inertia to be overcome in striking out a new line of conduct — not more in ourselves, it seems, than in circumscribing events, which appear as if leagued together to allow no novelties in the way of amelioration. Thomas Hardy
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Bathsheba loved Troy in the way that only self-reliant women do when they abandon their self-reliance. When a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away. Thomas Hardy
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Suddenly an unexpected series of sounds began to be heard in this place up against the starry sky. They were the notes of Oak´s flute. It came from the direction of a small dark object under the hedge - a shephard´s hut - now presenting an outline to which an unintiated person might have been puzzled to attach either meaning or use.. Being a man not without a frequent consciousness that there was some charm in this life he led, he stood still after looking at the sky as a useful instrument, and regarded it in an appreciative spirit, as a work of art superlatively beautiful. For a moment he seemed impressed with the speaking loneliness of the scene, or rather with the complete abstraction from all its compass of the sights and sounds of man.. Oak´s motions, though they had a quiet energy, were slow, and their deliberateness accorded well with his occupation. Fitness being the basis of beauty, nobody could have denied tha his steady swings and turns in and about the flock had elements of grace. His special power, morally, physically, and mentally, was static.. Oak was an intensely human man: indee, his humanity tore in pieces any politic intentions of his which bordered on strategy, and carried him on as by gravitation. A shadow in his life had always been that his flock should end in mutton - that a day could find a shepherd an arrant traitor to his gentle sheep. . Thomas Hardy
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He is as good as anybody in this parish! He is very particular, too, about going to church-yes, he is! '' I am afeard nobody ever saw him there. I never did, certainly.'' 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's ears like the thirteenth stroke of a crazy clock. It was not only received with utter incredulity as regarded itself, but threw doubt on all the assurances that had preceded it. . Thomas Hardy
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This supreme instance of Troy's goodness fell upon Gabriel's ears like the thirteenth stroke of a crazy clock. Thomas Hardy
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Don't take on about her, Gabriel. What difference does it make whose sweetheart she is, since she can't be yours?'' That's the very thing I say to myself, ' said Gabriel. Thomas Hardy