Far From the Madding Crowd

By Thomas Hardy QUOTATION: It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.
ATTRIBUTION: Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), British novelist, poet. Bathsheba, in Far from the Madding Crowd, ch. 51 (1874).

QUOTATION: It is safer to accept any chance that offers itself, and extemporize a procedure to fit it, than to get a good plan matured, and wait for a chance of using it.
ATTRIBUTION: Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), British novelist, poet. Far from the Madding Crowd, ch. VI (1874).

QUOTATION: The only superiority in women that is tolerable to the rival sex is, as a rule, that of the unconscious kind; but a superiority which recognizes itself may sometimes please by suggesting possibilities of capture to the subordinated man.
ATTRIBUTION: Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), British novelist, poet. Far from the Madding Crowd, ch. IV (1874).

QUOTATION: A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.
ATTRIBUTION: Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), British novelist, poet. Far from the Madding Crowd, ch. 18 (1874).

QUOTATION: It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession; with totally differing aims the method is the same on both sides.
ATTRIBUTION: Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), British novelist, poet. Far from the Madding Crowd, ch. XX (1874).

QUOTATION: It may have been observed that there is no regular path for getting out of love as there is for getting in. Some people look upon marriage as a short cut that way, but it has been known to fail.
ATTRIBUTION: Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), British novelist, poet. Far from the Madding Crowd, ch. V (1874).

QUOTATION: The Young Man’s Best Companion, The Farrier’s Sure Guide, The Veterinary Surgeon, Paradise Lost, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Robinson Crusoe, Ash’s Dictionary, and Walkingame’s Arithmetic, constituted his library; and though a limited series, it was one from which he had acquired more sound information by diligent perusal than many a man of opportunities had done from a furlong of laden shelves.
ATTRIBUTION: Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), British novelist, poet. Far from the Madding Crowd, ch. X (1874).

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