Quotes from Tess of the D’Urbervilles

17 notable lines from Thomas Hardy · 1891

Justice was done, and the President of the Immortals, in Aeschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess.

Closing line

  1. "Justice" was done, and the President of the Immortals (in Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess. And the d'Urberville knights and dames slept on in their tombs unknowing.

    Closing lines, Phase the Seventh: Fulfilment, ch. LIX

  2. Which do we live on—a splendid one or a blighted one? — A blighted one.

    Abraham and Tess, ch. IV

  3. They sometimes seem to be like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound—a few blighted.

    Tess on the stars, ch. IV

  4. Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?

    Abraham, to Tess, ch. IV

  5. I am ready.

    Tess, on her arrest at Stonehenge, Phase the Seventh: Fulfilment, ch. LVIII

  6. Why didn't you tell me there was danger in men-folk? Why didn't you warn me? Ladies know what to fend hands against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks; but I never had the chance o' learning in that way, and you did not help me!

    Tess, to her mother, Phase the Second: Maiden No More, ch. XII

  7. I am almost glad—yes, glad! This happiness could not have lasted. It was too much. I have had enough; and now I shall not live for you to despise me!

    Tess, to Angel at Stonehenge, Phase the Seventh: Fulfilment, ch. LVIII

  8. Whip me, crush me; you need not mind those people under the rick! I shall not cry out. Once victim, always victim—that's the law!

    Tess, to Alec, Phase the Sixth: The Convert, ch. XLVII

  9. She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself.

    Narrator, on Tess, Phase the First: The Maiden, ch. XI

  10. 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.

    Narrator, on Angel's reflections, Phase the Fifth: The Woman Pays, ch. XLIX

  11. In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving.

    Narrator, Phase the First: The Maiden, ch. V

  12. 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.

    Narrator, on Tess, Phase the Second: Maiden No More, ch. XIII

  13. Let the truth be told—women do as a rule live through such humiliations, and regain their spirits, and again look about them with an interested eye.

    Narrator, Phase the Third: The Rally, ch. XV

  14. A strong woman who recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.

    Narrator on Tess

  15. Patience, that blending of moral courage with physical timidity.

    Narrator, Phase the Fifth: The Woman Pays, ch. XLIII

  16. She had been made to break an accepted social law, but no law known to the environment in which she fancied herself such an anomaly.

    Narrator, Phase the Second