Thomas Hardy Quotes

English - Novelist June 2, 1840 - January 11, 1928

Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honor as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity.

Thomas Hardy

No one can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure.

Thomas Hardy

There are accents in the eye which are not on the tongue, and more tales come from pale lips than can enter an ear. It is both the grandeur and the pain of the remoter moods that they avoid the pathway of sound.

Thomas Hardy

The value of old age depends upon the person who reaches it. To some men of early performance it is useless. To others, who are late to develop, it just enables them to finish the job.

Thomas Hardy

The offhand decision of some commonplace mind high in office at a critical moment influences the course of events for a hundred years.

Thomas Hardy

My opinion is that a poet should express the emotion of all the ages and the thought of his own.

Thomas Hardy

The sky was clear - remarkably clear - and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of one body, timed by a common pulse.

Thomas Hardy