Thomas Hardy
Overview
Thomas Hardy, OM
Order of Merit
The Order of Merit is a British dynastic order recognising distinguished service in the armed forces, science, art, literature, or for the promotion of culture...

 (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism
Naturalism (literature)
Naturalism was a literary movement taking place from the 1880s to 1940s that used detailed realism to suggest that social conditions, heredity, and environment had inescapable force in shaping human character...

 movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

 and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.

While he regarded himself primarily as a poet who composed novels mainly for financial gain, he became and continues to be widely regarded for his novels, such as Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented, also known as Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, Tess of the d'Urbervilles or just Tess, is a novel by Thomas Hardy, first published in 1891. It initially appeared in a censored and serialised version, published by the British...

and Far from the Madding Crowd
Far from the Madding Crowd
Far from the Madding Crowd is Thomas Hardy's fourth novel and his first major literary success. It originally appeared anonymously as a monthly serial in Cornhill Magazine, where it gained a wide readership. Critical notices were plentiful and mostly positive...

.
Quotations

To discover evil in a new friend is to most people only an additional experience

Desperate Remedies|Desperate Remedies (1871), ch. 1

With all, the beautiful things of the earth become more dear as they elude pursuit; but with some natures utter elusion is the one special event which will make a passing love permanent for ever.

Desperate Remedies (1871), ch. 1

To dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. At the passing of the breeze the fir-trees sob and moan no less distinctly than they rock; the holly whistles as it battles with itself; the ash hisses amid its quiverings; the beech rustles while its flat boughs rise and fall.

Under the Greenwood Tree|Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), ch. 1

Good, but not religious-good.

Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), ch. 2

Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them.

The Hand of Ethelberta|The Hand of Ethelberta (1876), ch. 2

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

The Hand of Ethelberta (1876), ch. 9

A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. Circumspection and devotion are a contradiction in terms.

The Hand of Ethelberta (1876), ch. 20

You calculated how to be uncalculating, and are natural by art!

The Hand of Ethelberta (1876), ch. 20

I have seldom known a man cunning with his brush who was not simple with his tongue; or, indeed, any skill in particular that was not allied to general stupidity.

The Hand of Ethelberta (1876), ch. 20

 
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