Experience is as to intensity and not as to duration.

Though when at home their countenances varied with the seasons, their market faces all the year round were glowing little fires.

WEATHERSThis is the weather the cuckoo likes, And so do I; When showers betumble the chestnut spikes, And nestlings fly; And the little brown nightingale bills his best, And they sit outside at ‘The Traveller’s...

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...

We colour and mould according to the wants within us whatever our eyes bring in.

Eustacia Vye was the raw material of a divinity. On Olympus she would have done well with a little preparation. She had the passions and instincts which make a model goddess, that is, those which...

The atmosphere beneath is languorous, and is so tinged with azure that what artists call the middle distance partakes also of that hue, while the horizon beyond is of the deepest ultramarine.

A novel is an impression, not an argument; and there the matter must rest.

I don’t want to see landscapes, i.e. scenic paintings of them, because I don’t want to see the original realities – as optical effects that is. I want to see the deeper reality underlying the...

The purpose of a chronicler of moods and deeds does not require him to express his personal views upon the grave controversy above given.

Fundamental belief consoled him for superficial irony.

I looked up from my writing, And gave a start to see,As if rapt in my inditing, The moon’s full gaze on me.

How very lovable her face was to him. Yet there was nothing ethereal about it; all was real vitality, real warmth, real incarnation. And it was in her mouth that this culminated. Eyes almost as...

But you will never realize that an incident which filled but a degree in the circle of your thoughts covered the whole circumference of mine. No person can see exactly what and where another’s horizon...

Idiosyncrasy and vicissitude had combined to stamp Sergeant Troy as an exceptional being.

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

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

She seemed to be occupied with of inner chamber of ideas and to have slight need for visible objects.

I have sometimes thought–that under the affectation of independent views you are as enslaved to the social code as any woman I know!

She might have seen that what had bowed her head so profoundly – the thought of the world’s concern at her situation – was founded on an illusion. She was not an existence, an experience,...

If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone.

Done because we are too many.

When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often then not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.

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...

Finding this, she was much perplexed as to Henchard’s motives in opening the matter at all; for in such cases we attribute to an enemy a power of consistent action which we never find in...

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...

My eyes were dazed by you for a little, and that was all.

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...

But you shouldn’t have let her. That’s the only way with these fanciful women that chaw high–innocent or guilty. She’d have come round in time. We all do! Custom does it! It’s all the same...

At first I did not love you, Jude; that I own. When I first knew you I merely wanted you to love me. I did not exactly flirt with you; but that inborn craving which...

-the ethereal, fine-nerved, sensitive girl, quite unfitted by temperament and instinct to fulfil the conditions of the matrimonial relation with Phillotson, possibly with scarce any man…

When the love-led man had ceased from his labors Bathsheba came and looked him in the face. ‘Gabriel, will you stay on with me?’ she said, smiling winningly, and not troubling to bring her lips...

Every woman who makes a permanent impression on a man is afterwards recalled to his mind’s eye as she appeared in one particular scene, which seems ordained to be her special medium of manifestation throughout...

Tess’s feminine hope – shall we confess it – had been so obstinately recuperative as to revive in her surreptitious visions of a domiciliary intimacy continued long enough to break down his coldness even against...

The yard was a little centre of regeneration. Here, with keen edges and smooth curves, were forms in the exact likeness of those he had seen abraded and time-eaten on the walls. These were the...

I think that whenever children be born that are not wanted they should be killed directly, before their souls come to ’em, and not allowed to grow big and walk about!

Some of the dairy people, who were also out of doors on the first Sunday evening after their engagement, heard her impulsive speeches, ecstasized to fragments, though they were too far off to hear the...

He’s charmed by her as if she were some fairy!” continued Arabella. “See how he looks round at her, and lets his eyes rest on her. I am inclined to think that she don’t care...

[She] soon perceived that as she walked in the flock, sometimes with this one, sometimes with that, that the fresh night air was producing staggerings and serpentine courses among the men who had partaken too...

But you are too lovely even to care to be kind as others are.

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

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...

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...

I know women are taught by other women that they must never admit the full truth to a man. But the highest form of affection is based on full sincerity on both sides. Not being...

On the morning appointed for her departure Tess awoke 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...

Tell him everything; it is best. He will forgive you.

If the story-tellers could ha’ got decency and good morals from true stories, who’d have troubled to invent parables?

It was the week after Easter holidays, and he was journeying along with Smart the mare and the light spring-cart, watching the damp slopes of the hill-sides as they steamed in the warmth of the...