Quotes from Far from the Madding Crowd

“They spoke very little of their mutual feeling; pretty phrases and warm expressions being probably unnecessary between such tried friends.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“I shall do one thing in this life - one thing certain - that is, love you, and long for you, and keep wanting you till I die.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“And at home by the fire, whenever you look up there I shall be— and whenever I look up, there will be you.
-Gabriel Oak”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“Well, what I mean is that I shouldn't mind being a bride at a wedding, if I could be one without having a husband.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“She was of the stuff of which great men's mothers are made. She was indispensable to high generation, feared at tea-parties, hated in shops, and loved at crises.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“Sometimes I shrink from your knowing what I have felt for you, and sometimes I am distressed that all of it you will never know.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“Bathsheba loved Troy in the way that only self-reliant women love when they abandon their self-reliance. When a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman who has never any strength to throw away. One source of her inadequacy is the novelty of the occasion. She has never had practice in making the best of such a condition. Weakness is doubly weak by being new.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“You overrate my capacity of love. I don't posess half the warmth of nature you believe me to have. An unprotected childhood in a cold world has beaten gentleness out of me.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“In making even horizontal and clear inspections we colour and mould according to the wants within us whatever our eyes bring in.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“We learn that it is not the rays which bodies absorb, but those which they reject, that give them the colours they are known by; and in the same way people are specialized by their dislikes and antagonisms, whilst their goodwill is looked upon as no attribute at all.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“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”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“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.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“It is rarely that the pleasures of the imagination will compensate for the pain of sleeplessness,”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“What a way Oak had, she thought, of enduring things. Boldwood, who seemed so much deeper and higher and stronger in feeling than Gabriel, had not yet learnt, any more than she herself, the simple lesson which Oak showed a mastery of by every turn and look he gave—that among the multitude of interests by which he was surrounded, those which affected his personal well-being were not the most absorbing and important in his eyes. Oak meditatively looked upon the horizon of circumstances without any special regard to his own standpoint in the midst. That was how she would wish to be”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“Silence has sometimes a remarkable power of showing itself as the disembodied sould of feeling wandering without its carcase, and it is then more impressive than speech. In the same way to say a little is often to tell more than to say.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“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 Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“But some women only require an emergency to make them fit for one.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world is almost a palpable movement. To enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night, and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilized mankind, who are diregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“Indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man, is the basis of his sublimity when it does not.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“When a strong woman recklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“I am not a fool, you know, although I am a woman, and have my woman’s moments.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“George's son had done his work so thoroughly that he was considered too good a workman to live, and was, in fact, taken and tragically shot at twelve o'clock that same day—another instance of the untoward fate which so often attends dogs and other philosophers who follow out a train of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and attempt perfectly consistent conduct in a world made up so largely of compromise.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“I have felt lately, more and more, that my present way of living is bad in every respect.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“They spoke very little of their mutual feelings: pretty phrases and warm attentions being probably unnecessary between such tried friends.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“Many of her thoughts were perfect syllogisms; unluckily they always remained thoughts. Only a few were irrational assumptions; but, unfortunately, they were the ones which most frequently grew into deeds”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

“He wished she knew his impressions, but he would as soon as thought of carrying an odour in a net as of attempting to convey the intangibles of his feeling in the coarse meshes of language. So he remained silent.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Far from the Madding Crowd

Video

About the author

Popular quotes

“What’s a woman supposed to do when her angel starts using her devil’s tools?”
― Kyra Davis, quote from Just One Night

“Spirits carry an ozone scent, and demons smell like sulfur or rotten eggs. A person might not even consciously register the smell, but they’ll sense it on some level. It’s that awareness that the spirit can use as a doorway to return to the environment.”
― J.D. Horn, quote from The Source

“Many individuals are so constituted that their only thought is to obtain pleasure and shun responsibility. They would like, butterfly-like, to wing forever in a summer garden, flitting from flower to flower, and sipping honey for their sole delight. They have no feeling that any result which might flow from their action should concern them. They have no conception of the necessity of a well-organized society wherein all shall accept a certain quota of responsibility and all realize a reasonable amount of happiness. They think only of themselves because they have not yet been taught to think of society. For them pain and necessity are the great taskmasters. Laws are but the fences which circumscribe the sphere of their operations. When, after error, pain falls as a lash, they do not comprehend that their suffering is due to misbehavior. Many such an individual is so lashed by necessity and law that he falls fainting to the ground, dies hungry in the gutter or rotting in the jail and it never once flashes across his mind that he has been lashed only in so far as he has persisted in attempting to trespass the boundaries which necessity sets. A prisoner of fate, held enchained for his own delight, he does not know that the walls are tall, that the sentinels of life are forever pacing, musket in hand. He cannot perceive that all joy is within and not without. He must be for scaling the bounds of society, for overpowering the sentinel. When we hear the cries of the individual strung up by the thumbs, when we hear the ominous shot which marks the end of another victim who has thought to break loose, we may be sure that in another instance life has been misunderstood--we may be sure that society has been struggled against until death alone would stop the individual from contention and evil.”
― Theodore Dreiser, quote from Sister Carry

“I understand that art is a necessary component of a civilized society, but you cannot just go around shooting people. That's going to be a problem.”
― Kevin Wilson, quote from The Family Fang

“Do we spend most of our days trying to remember or to forget? Do we spend most of our time running towards or away from our lives?”
― Markus Zusak, quote from Fighting Ruben Wolfe

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.