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My ardours for emprize nigh lost
Since Life has bared its bones to me,
I shrink to seek a modern coast
Whose riper times have yet to be;
Where the new regions claim them free
From that long drip of human tears
Which peoples old in tragedy
Have left upon the centuried years.

— Thomas Hardy Poems of the Past and the Present (1901)

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Sadness

More quotes by Thomas Hardy

Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons!

Jude the Obscure (1895)

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

The Hand of Ethelberta (1876)

It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.

Far from the Madding Crowd (1874)

Patience, that blending of moral courage with physical timidity.

Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891)

The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank blooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen.

The Return of the Native (1878)

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Life could not be lived wet, whether it be in rain or tears.

Sanu Sharma

In much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

Solomon

In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares.

Abraham Lincoln

Every joy that some experience is paid for by the sorrow of others.

Kaneko Fumiko The Prison Memoirs of a Japanese Woman (1991)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Thomas Hardy (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.