_______
/ \
/ WESSEX \
/ ~~~~~ \
/ \_ _/ \
| / \ / \ |
| | -o- | | "I am the family face;
| \ / \ / | flesh perishes, I live on"
\ / \ /
\ / \ /
"~~~~~~~~~"
THOMAS HARDY
1840-1928
The Wessex
A Tribute to Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Words from Wessex
Hardy's prose is quotable not for its wit but for its precision—the careful observation of someone who looked long and hard at human nature.
Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.
A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all.
If way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst.
The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him.
Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons.
Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.
That man's silence is wonderful to listen to.
Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art.
I am the family face; flesh perishes, I live on.
Some folk want their luck buttered.
A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
There is a condition worse than blindness, and that is, seeing something that isn't there.
Pessimism is, in brief, playing the sure game.
You can do anything with bayonets except sit on them.
The value of old age depends upon the person who reaches it.
The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes.
Silence has sometimes a remarkable power of showing itself as the disembodied soul of feeling wandering without its carcase.
Done because we are too menny.
The letter killeth.
From the Novels
"A strong woman who recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away." — Far from the Madding Crowd
"That it would always be summer and autumn, and you always courting me, and always thinking as much of me as you have done through the past summertime!" — Tess
"Done because we are too menny." — Jude the Obscure (the note left by Little Father Time)