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"The only exercise that Tess took at this time was after dark; and it was then, when out in the woods, that she seemed least solitary... She had no fear of the shadows; her sole idea seemed to be to shun mankind-or rather that cold accretion called the world, which, so terrible in the mass, is so unformidable, even pitiable, in its units."
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"I had gotten so used to being alone, but never entirely used to it. Never used to it enough to stop wanting the alternative."

"The time of solitude is actually an opportunity to make time work for you."

"Solitude is a greater treasure than money."

"Alone! yesterday, today and forever."

"I am but a stranger ... as we all are. Lonely inside our separate skins, we cannot know each others pain and must bear our own in solitude. For my part, I have found that walking soothes it; and that, given luck, sometimes we find one to walk besides us ... at least for a little way."
Explore more quotes by Thomas Hardy


"He grew away from old associations, and saw something new in life and humanity. Secondarily, he made close acquaintance with phenomena which he had before known but darkly - the seasons in their moods, morning and evening, night and noon, winds in their different tempers, trees, waters and mists, shades and silences, and the voices of inanimate things."


"Life with a man is more businesslike after it, and money matters work better. And then, you see, if you have rows, and he turns you out of doors, you can get the law to protect you, which you can't otherwise, unless he half-runs you through with a knife, or cracks your noddle with a poker. And if he bolts away from you--I say it friendly, as woman to woman, for there's never any knowing what a man med do-- you'll have the sticks o' furniture, and won't be looked upon as a thief."


"But there were certain early days in Casterbridge- days of firmamental exhaustion which followed angry south-westerly tempests-when, if the sun shone, the air was like velvet."


"She seemed to be occupied with of inner chamber of ideas and to have slight need for visible objects."


"Backlock, a poet blind from his birth, could describe visual objects with accuracy; Professor Sanderson, who was also blind, gave excellent lectures on color, and taught others the theory of ideas which they had and he had not. In the social sphere these gifted ones are mostly women; they can watch a world which they never saw, and estimate forces of which they have only heard. We call it intuition."


"You are absolutely the most ethereal, least sensual woman I ever knew to exist without inhuman sexlessness."


"When you've made up your mind to marry, take the first respectable body that comes to hand - she's as good as any other; they be all alike in groundwork: 'tis only in the flourishes there's a difference."
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