I was surprised how much of me was already in Tess. Tess is a really emotional character. It’s not about what she says - it’s about what she’s thinking and feeling.
You seem to see numbers of tomorrows just all in a line, the first of them the biggest and clearest, the others getting smaller and smaller as they stand farther away; but they all seem very fierce and cruel and as if they said, ‘I’m coming! Beware of me! Beware of me!’
~ Tess of the D’Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy (via tuonela)
He had been forgetting himself, he had to join his companions. As he fell out of the dance his eyes lighted on Tess Durbyfield, whose own large orbs wore, to tell the truth, the faintest aspect of reproach that he had not chosen her.
The outskirt of the garden in which Tess found herself had been left uncultivated for some years, and was now damp and rank with juicy grass which sent up mists of pollen at a touch; and with tall blooming weeds emitting offensive smells – weeds whose red and yellow and purple hues formed a polychrome as dazzling as that of cultivated flowers. She went stealthily as a cat through this profusion of growth, gathering cuckoo-spittle on her skirts, cracking snails that were underfoot, staining her hands with thistle-milk and slug-slime, and rubbing off upon her naked arms sticky blights which, though snow-white on the apple-tree trunks, made blood-red stains on her skin.
~ Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles (via adamshiel)
She knew how to hit to a hair’s-breadth that moment of evening when the light and the darkness are so evenly balanced that the constraint of day and the suspense of night neutralize each other, leaving absolute mental liberty. It is then that the plight of being becomes attenuated to its least possible dimensions. She had no fear of the shadows; her sole idea seemed to be to shun mankind—or rather that cold accretion called the worlds, which, so terrible in the mass, is so unformidable, even pitiable, in its units.
~ Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles (via de-la-soul)
You, and those like you, take your fill of pleasure on earth by making the life of such as me bitter and black with sorrow; and then it is a fine thing, when you have had enough of that, to think of securing your pleasure in heaven by becoming converted!
~ “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” - Thomas Hardy (via thatfontainewoman)
Thus the thing began. Had she perceived this meeting’s import she might have asked why she was doomed to be seen and coveted that day by the wrong man, and not by some other man, the right and desired one in all respects - as nearly as humanity can supply the right and desired…
~ “Tess of the d’Urbervilles” - Thomas Hardy (via thatfontainewoman)
The past was the past; whatever it had been, it was no more at hand. Whatever its consequences, time would close over them; they would all in a few years be as if they had never been, and she herself grassed down and forgotten. Meanwhile the trees were just as green as before; the birds sang and the sun shone as clearly now as ever. The familiar surroundings had not darkened because of her grief, nor sickened because of her pain.
