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 HardyIf an offense come out of the truth, better is it that the offense come than that the truth be concealed.
Thomas HardyThe perfect woman, you see [is] a working-woman; not an idler; not a fine lady; but one who [uses] her hands and her head and her heart for the good of others.
Thomas HardyA woman would rather visit her own grave than the place where she has been young and beautiful after she is aged and ugly.
Thomas HardyO, you have torn my life all to pieces... made me be what I prayed you in pity not to make me be again!
Thomas HardyThat mercy towards one set of creatures was cruelty towards another sickened his sense of harmony. As you got older, and felt yourself to be at the center of your time, and not at a point in its circumference, as you had felt when you were little, you were seized with a sort of shuddering, he perceived. All around you there seemed to be something glaring, garish, rattling, and the noises and glares hit upon the little cell called your life, and shook it, and warped it.
Thomas Hardy