The beauty or ugliness of a character lay not only in its achievements…

Thomas Hardy
157 citations
The beauty or ugliness of a character lay not only in its achievements, but in its aims and impulses; its true history lay, not among things done, but among things willed. ✨ Thomas Hardy (2016). Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, p.412, Thomas Hardy
Truth
15

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I wish I had never been born--there or anywhere else. ✨ Thomas Hardy (2016). Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Diversion Classics), p.95, Diversion Books
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 d … ▶
...Nameless, unknown to me as you were, I couldn't forget your voice!' 'For how long?' 'O - ever so long. Days and days.' 'Days and days! Only days and days? O, the heart of a man! Days and days!' 'B … ▶
By experience, says Roger Ascham, we find out a short way by a long wandering. Not seldom that long wandering unfits us for further travel, and of what use is our experience to us then? ✨ Thomas Hard … ▶
Never in her life – she could swear it from the bottom of her soul – had she ever intended to do wrong; yet these hard judgments had come. Whatever her sins, they were not sins of intention, but of i … ▶

The beauty or ugliness of a character lay not only in its achievements, but in its aims and impulses; its true history lay, not among things done, but among things willed. ✨ Thomas Hardy (2016). Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, p.412, Thomas Hardy

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