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












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

More Thomas Hardy quotes
"I shall be up before you are awake; I shall be afield before you are up; and I shall have breakfasted before you are afield. In short, I shall astonis...
"Done because we are too many.
"Her heart longed for some ark into which it could fly and be at rest. Rough or smooth she did not care, so long as it was warm.
"If I really seem vain, it is that I am only vain in my ways—not in my heart. The worst women are those vain in their hearts, and not in their ways.
"You know, mistress, that I love you, and shall love you always
"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 myse...
"It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage ...
"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...
"This supreme instance of Troy's goodness fell upon Gabriel's ears like the thirteenth stroke of a crazy clock.
"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 ...
"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.
"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...
"She had not heard him enter, and hardly realized his presence there. She was yawning, and he saw the red interior of her mouth as if it had been a sna...
"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...