Under the Greenwood Tree Quotes

“If we be doomed to marry, we marry; if we be doomed to remain single we do.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“To dwellers in a wood, almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“There's a friendly tie of some sort between music and eating.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“Everybody must be managed. Queens must be managed. Kings must be managed, for men want managing almost as much as women, and that's saying a good deal.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“If the story-tellers could ha' got decency and good morals from true stories, who'd have troubled to invent parables?”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“Thought failed him, and he returned to realities.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“Half an hour afterwards Dick emerged from the inn, and if Fancy's lips had been real cherries, probably Dick's would have appeared deeply stained.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“Why, you make anyone think that loving is a thing that can be done and undone, and put on and put off at a mere whim.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“How people will talk about one’s doings!” Fancy exclaimed.

“Well, if you make songs about yourself, my dear, you can’t blame other people for singing ’em.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“Tis my belief she’s a very good woman at bottom.”

“She’s terrible deep, then.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“He looked at the daylight shadows of a yellow hue, dancing with the firelight shadows in blue on the whitewashed chimney corner, but there was nothing in shadows.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“Tell him everything; it is best. He will forgive you.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“If Fancy's lips had been real cherries probably Dick's would have appeared deeply stained.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“He was conscious of a cold and sickly thrill throughout him; and all he reasoned was this, that the young creature whose graces had intoxicated him into making the most imprudent decision of his life, was less an angel than a women.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“Close? ah, he is close! He can hold his tongue well. That man’s dumbness is wonderful to listen to.”

“There’s so much sense in it. Every moment of it is brimmen over wi’ sound understanding.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“...and to his eyes, casually glancing upward, the silver and black-stemmed birches, with their characteristic tufts, the pale grey boughs of beech, the dark-creviced elm all appeared now as black and flat outlines upon the sky, wherein the white stars twinkled so vehemently that their flickering seemed like the flapping of wings.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“It being the first time in his life that he had touched female fingers under water, Dick duly registered the sensation as rather a nice one.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“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.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“It was the week after Easter holidays, and he was journeying along with Smart the mare and the light spring-cart, watching the damp slopes of the hill-sides as they steamed in the warmth of the sun, which at this unsettled season shone on the grass with the freshness of an occasional inspector rather than as an accustomed proprietor.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“Such poor liquor do make a man's throat feel very melancholy--and is a disgrace to the name of stimmilent.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“No; the charm is worked by common sense, and the spell can only be broke by your acting stupidly.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“If we be doomed to marry, we marry; if we be doomed to remain single, we do.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“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'll be all alike in the groundwork; 'tis only in the flourishes there's a difference.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“A young woman's face will turn the north wind, Master Richard: my heart if 'twon't”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“The point in Yalbury Wood which abutted on the end of Geoffrey Day's premises was closed with an ancient tree, horizontally of enormous extent ,though having no great pretensions to height. Many hundreds of birds had been born amidst the boughs of this single tree: tribes of rabbits and hares had nibbled at it's bark from year to year; quaint tufts of fungi had sprung from the cavities of it's forks; and countless families of moles and earthworms had crept about its roots.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“'Shall anything bolder be found than united woman?' Mr Spinks murmured.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“Dick wondered how it was that when people were married they could be so blind to romance; and was quite certain that if he ever took to wife that dear impossible Fancy, he and she would never be so dreadfully practical and undemonstrative of the Passion as his father and mother were. The most extraordinary thing was, that all the fathers and mothers he knew were just as undemonstrative as his own.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“Distance belongs to it, slyness belongs to it, quarest things on earth belongs to it. There, ’tmay as well come early as late s’far as I know. The sooner begun, the sooner over; for come it will.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“Yes: there; wives be such a provoking class o’ society, because though they be never right, they be never more than half wrong.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree

“tis a talent of the female race that low numbers should stand for high, more especially in matters of waiting, matters of age, and matters of money.”
― Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree