So the baby was carried in a small deal box, under an ancient woman’s shawl, to the churchyard that night, and buried by lantern-light, at the cost of a shilling and a pint of beer to the sexton, in that shabby corner of God’s allotment where He lets the nettles grow, and where all unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards, suicides, and others of the conjecturally damned are laid.
This was a practical application of the principle that a half-feigned and fictitious faith is better than no faith at all.
Gabriel Oak: “It’s time for you to fight your own battles... and win them too.
Decisive action is seen by appreciative minds to be frequently objectless, and sometimes fatal; but decision, however suicidal, has more charm for a woman than the most unequivocal Fabian success.
Tess was carried along the wings of the hours.
But now that her moral sorrows were passing away a fresh one arose.
But the bitter thing is, that when I was rich I didn’t need what I could have, and now I be poor I can’t have what I need!
Had Philip’s warlike son been intellectually so far ahead as to have attempted civilisation without bloodshed, he would have been twice the godlike hero that he seemed; but nobody would have heard of an Alexander.
Your next world is your next world, and not to be squandered offhand.
But you are too lovely even to care to be kind as others are.
I have seen your mother; and I will never see her again!
In general the cows were milked as they presented themselves, without fancy or choice. But certain cows will show a fondness for a particular pair of hands, sometimes carrying this predilection so far as to refuse to stand at all except to their favourite, the pail of a stranger being unceremoniously kicked over.
Nature does not often say “See!” to her poor creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply “Here!” to a body’s cry of “Where?
A profile was visible against the dull monochrome of cloud around her; and it was as though side shadows from the features of Sappho and Mrs. Siddons had converged upwards from the tomb to form an image like neither but suggesting both.
And if you hear a frog jump into the pond with a flounce like a stone thrown in, be sure you run and tell me, because it is a sign of rain.
You are nothing to me – nothing,” said Troy, heartlessly. “A ceremony before a priest doesn’t make a marriage. I am not morally yours.
I determined you should come; and you have come! I have shown my power.
There are men whose hearts insist upon a dogged fidelity to some image or cause thrown by chance into their keeping, long after their judgment has pronounced it no rarity – even the reverse, indeed, and without them the band of the worthy is incomplete.
This supreme instance of Troy’s goodness fell upon Gabriel’s ears like the thirteenth stroke of a crazy clock.
Many of her thoughts were perfect syllogisms; unluckily they always remained thoughts.