Thomas Hardy Quotes

Marriage follows on love as smoke on flame.

I couldn't put my hand on my heart and say I think that being in a relationship is a natural state for a human being.

As relationships progress, the time you spend smooching diminishes. Where kissing was once an enjoyable entree unto itself, it becomes a mere appetizer couples hasten through on the way to the main course.

Each coming together of man and wife, even if they have been mated for many years, should be a fresh adventure; each winning should necessitate a fresh wooing.

I think that monogamy is artificial. I do not think it's something that comes naturally to us.

A girl does not treat a possible lover with unvarying simplicity and directness. In all its phases, love is complex; friendship is not.

If it weren't for marriage, men and women would have to fight with total strangers.

Every man in the time of courtship and in the first entrance of marriage, puts on a behavior like my correspondent's holiday suit.

Wind indeed increases fire, but custom love.

Love is something difficult and it is more difficult than other things because in other conflicts nature herself enjoins men to collect themselves, to take themselves firmly in the hand with all their strength, while in the heightening of love the impulse is to give oneself wholly away.

It ain't because lovers are so sensitive that they quarrel so often; it is because there is so much fun n the making up.

The anger of lovers renews the strength of love.

I always just loved women, but more important than loving women, more important than sexual stuff, is I always believed in romance.

I've been sitting down studying the Art of Love. I think it will fit me like a glove.

"Don't let go!" he orders. Harper's hand is dry and soothing, while mine is sweaty with fear. We've never held hands before. I think about what it means in the village when boys and girls only a few years older then Harper and me wander around with their hands clasped together. They're always peering dreamily into each other's eyes, sneaking sky kisses...and soon after, there's a wedding.

You used to say. "Desire doubled is love and love doubled is madness." Madness doubled is marriage I added when the caustic was cool, not intending to produce a golden rule.

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we lov'd?

Eleanor's hair caught fire at dawn. Her eyes were dark and shining, and his arms were sure of her. The first time he touched her hand, he'd known.

People say when you're in love, you don't need etiquette. Well, you need it then more than anything. Or they say, "At home I can just be myself." What they mean is they can be their worst selves... They always mean they will save all their anxiety about how to behave for somebody like the head waiter of a restaurant, someone they'll never see again.

To many women marriage is only this. It is merely a physical change impinging on their ordinary nature, leaving their mentality untouched, their self-possession intact. They are not burnt by even the red fire of physical passion - far less by the white fire of love.

Relationships that begin in passion's raging fire often end in the coldest ashes.

You must not contrast too strongly the hours of courtship with the years of possession.

Everyone is having sex until they fall in love. When you fall in love, then it's making love.

Your hand is cold, mine burns like fire. How blind you are, Nastenka!

There is the same difference in a person before and after he is in love, as there is in an unlighted lamp and one that is burning.