Thomas Hardy

The resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.

A resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.

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.

A woman would rather visit her own grave than the place where she has been young and beautiful after she is aged and ugly.

Fear is the mother of foresight.

There is a condition worse than blindness, and that is, seeing something that isn't there.

Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.

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

Patience, that blending of moral courage with physical timidity.

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.

My argument is that War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading.

The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes.