Thomas Hardy

People go on marrying because they can't resist natural forces, although many of them may know perfectly well that they are possibly buying a month's pleasure with a life's discomfort.

Happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.

There seemed to be two distinct entities: the woman of flesh, and the image of herself in the minds of others.

His morning thoughts were still of what they had been for so many months—those of a man who did not believe in God, and was therefore without hope for himself or humanity.

In his secret heart he would make no further desperate endeavours to rise daily to a height above himself; but would become as his environment was—dark, and even sinister.

What had once been the repository of his leisure came to be his chamber of torture.

Don't you think it's rather nice to think that we're in a book that God's writing? If I were writing a book, I might make mistakes. But God knows how to make the best artists—there's not a single mistake in any of his plans.

But there’s such a difference between saying a thing yourself and hearing other people say it.

No one can really be taught to write. Long practice in the habit of writing so as to think on paper is the only way.

It's no use pretending that love is not the strongest thing in the world. The strongest thing in the world is an individual as you know, whereas love is a flux of changing forms.

I might have known what you would do! People like you—who can't do anything themselves—always reproach others.

That's what education is—it spoils people's memory.