Mayor Of Casterbridge Quotes

Happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.

I won't be a slave to the past. I'll love where I choose.

Some folks want their luck buttered.

She had learned the lesson of renunciation and was as familiar with the wreck of each day's wishes as with the diurnal setting of the sun.

Life is an oasis which is submerged in the swirling waves of sorrows and agonies.

She had the hard, half-apathetic expression of one who deems anything possible at the hands of time and chance, except perhaps fair play

She had been too early habituated to anxious reasoning to drop the habit suddenly.

Her companion, also in black, appeared as a well-formed young woman about 18, completely possessed of that ephemeral precious essence youth, which is itself beauty, irrespective of complexion or contour.

It was part of his nature to extenuate nothing and live on as one of his own worst accusers.

Fundamental belief consoled him for superficial irony.

If ever tears and pleadings have served the weak to fight the strong, let them do so now!

He was to them like the poet of a new school who takes his contemporaries by storm; who is not really new, but is the first to articulate what all his listeners have felt, though but dumbly till then.

She seemed to be occupied with of inner chamber of ideas and to have slight need for visible objects.

But the bitter thing is, that when I was rich I didn't need what I could have, and now I be poor I can't have what I need!

Misery taught him nothing more than defiant endurance of it.

The pain she experienced from the almost absolute obliviousness to her existence that was shown by the pair of them became at times half dissipated by her sense of its humourousness.

Finding this, she was much perplexed as to Henchard's motives in opening the matter at all; for in such cases we attribute to an enemy a power of consistent action which we never find in ourselves or or in our friends...

Her experience had been of a kind to teach her, rightly or wrongly, that the doubtful honor of a brief transit through a sorry world hardly called for effusiveness, even when the path was suddenly irradiated at some half-way point by daybeams rich as hers. But her strong sense that neither she nor any human being deserved less than was given, did not blind her to the fact that there were others receiving less who had deserved much more. And in being forced to class herself among the fortunate she did not cease to wonder at the persistence of the unforeseen, when the one to whom such unbroken tranquility had been accorded in the adult stage was she whose youth had seemed to teach that happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.

He was like one who had half fainted, and could neither recover nor complete the swoon.

To keep in the rear of opportunity in matters of indulgence is as valuable a habit as to keep abreast of opportunity in matters of enterprise.

And all this while the subtle-souled girl asking herself why she was born, why sitting in a room, and blinking at the candle; why things around her had taken the shape they wore in preference to every other possible shape.

Though when at home their countenances varied with the seasons, their market faces all the year round were glowing little fires.

Henchard, like all his kind, was superstitious, and he could not help thinking that the concatenation of events this evening had produced was the scheme of some sinister intelligence bent on punishing him.

I object to that conversation!" interposed the old woman. "I was not capable enough to hear what I said, and what is said out of my hearing is not evidence.

...who remained as fixed in the arm-chair as if she had been melted into it when in a liquid state, and could not now be unstuck...

Her suspense was terrible.

Her heart longed for some ark into which it could fly and be at rest. Rough or smooth she did not care, so long as it was warm.

If she had not been imprudence incarnate, she would not have acted as she did when she met Henchard by accident a day or two later.

Eyeing her as a critic eyes a doubtful painting.

Once victim, always victim-that's the law.

Don't for God's sake speak as saint to sinner, but as you yourself to me myself - poor me!

The Scotchman seemed hardly the same Farfrae who had danced with her, and walked with her, in a delicate poise between love and friendship - that period in the history of a love when alone it can be said to be unalloyed with pain.

Here and everywhere be folk dying before their time like frosted leaves, though wanted by their families, the country, and the world; while I, an outcast, an encumberer of the ground, wanted by nobody, and despised by all, live on against my will!

There are men whose hearts insist upon a dogged fidelity to some image or cause thrown by chance into their keeping, long after their judgment has pronounced it no rarity—even the reverse, indeed, and without them the band of the worthy is incomplete.

The curious double strands in Farfrae's thread of life - the commercial and the romantic - were very distinct at times. Like the colours in a variegated cord those contrasts could be seen intertwisted, yet not mingling.

Fancies find room in the strongest minds. Here, in a churchyard old as civilization, in the worst of weathers, was a strange woman of curious fascinations never seen elsewhere: there might be some devilry about her presence.

The spring came and calmed her; the summer came and soothed her; the autumn arrived, and she began to be comforted, for her little girl was strong and happy, growing in size and knowledge every day.

Yet her experience had consisted less in a series of pure disappointments than in a series of substitutions. Continually it had happened that what she had desired had not been granted her, and that what had been granted her she had not desired. So she viewed with an approach to equanimity the now cancelled days when Donald had been her undeclared lover, and wondered what unwished-for thing Heaven might send her in place of him.

Like all people who have known rough times, light-heartedness seemed to her too irrational and inconsequent to be indulged in except as a reckless dram now and then; for she had been too early habituated to anxious reasoning to drop the habit suddenly...Her triumph was tempered by circumspection, she had still that field-mouse fear of the coulter of destiny despite fair promise, which is common among the thoughtful who have suffered early from poverty and oppression.

The rain still continued, the candlelight falling upon the nearest drops and making glistening darts of them as they descended across the throng of invisible ones behind. To plunge into that medium was to plunge into water slightly diluted with air.

Era racchiusa in un firmamento di luci e sibili acuti che somigliava a un cielo pieno di meteore, proprio lì, a portata di mano.

Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge.

In the middle of the porch was a vertical sun-dial, whose gnomon swayed loosely about when the wind blew, and cast its shadow hither and thither, as much as to say, ‘Here’s your fine model dial; here’s any time for any man; I am an old dial; and shiftiness is the best policy.

The man was of fine figure, swarthy, and stern in aspect; and he showed in profile a facial angle so slightly inclined as to be almost perpendicular. He wore a short jacket of brown corduroy, newer than the remainder of his suit, which was a fustian waistcoat with white horn buttons, breeches of the same, tanned leggings, and a straw hat overlaid with black glazed canvas. At his back he carried by a looped strap a rush basket, from which protruded at one end the crutch of a hay-knife, a wimble for hay-bonds being also visible in the aperture. His measured, springless walk was the walk of the skilled countryman as distinct from the desultory shamble of the general labourer; while in the turn and plant of each foot there was, further, a dogged and cynical indifference personal to himself, showing its presence even in the regularly interchanging fustian folds, now in the left leg, now in the right, as he paced along.

And thus Henchard found himself again on the precise standing which he had occupied a quarter of a century before. Externally there was nothing to hinder his making another start on the upward slope, and by his new lights achieving higher things than his soul in its half-formed state had been able to accomplish. But the ingenious machinery contrived by the Gods for reducing human possibilities of amelioration to a minimum--which arranges that wisdom to do shall come pari passu with the departure of zest for doing--stood in the way of all that. He had no wish to make an arena a second time of a world that had become a mere painted scene to him.

toss-pot

don’t know about ghosts,” she was saying; “but I do know that our souls can be made to go outside our bodies when we are alive.

O, if I had my wish, I'd let people live and love at their pleasure!

It is as risky to calculate people’s ways of living from their writings as their incomes from their way of living.

fatuity

grain, flour, milk, raisins, currants,

furmity;

carrefour

He was getting on towards the dead level of middle age, when material things increasingly possess the mind.

and l felt for the first time that my fastidiousness was a blessing.

in PARADISE LOST, and at last whispered them to himself — ‘Fool’d and beguiled: by him thou, I by thee!

furze-

Und da sie genötigt war, sich selbst zu den Glücklichen zu zählen, hörte sie nicht auf, über den Fortbestand des Unvorhergesehenen zu staunen, wo diejenige, der solche ungebrochene Heiterkeit im Erwachsenenstadium zuteil wurde, sie selbst war, deren Jugend sie gelehrt zu haben schien, daß Glück nur eine zufällige Episode in dem allgemeinen Drama menschlicher Pein war.

& that nobody is wished to see my dead body. “& that no murners walk behind me at my funeral. “& that no flours be planted on my grave. “& that no man remember me. “To this I put my name.

Totuşi, experienţa ei consta nu numai dintr-o serie de dezamăgiri, ci mai ales dintr-o serie de substituiri. Se întâmplase de mai multe ori ca ceea ce dorea să nu-i fie acordat, dar să nu fi dorit ceea ce i se acorda. Aşa că acum privea cu un fel de linişte interioară zilele pe veci apuse când Donald fusese iubitul ei tainic şi se întreba ce lucru nedorit îi va trimite acum cerul în locul lui.

He seemed to feel exactly as she felt about life and its surroundings - that they were a tragical rather than a comical thing; that though one could be gay on occasion, moments of gaiety were interludes, and no part of the actual drama.

Sie hatte die Lektion des Verzichts gelernt und war mit dem täglichen Scheitern ihrer Wünsche so vertraut wie mit dem täglich wiederkehrenden Untergang der Sonne. Wenn ihre irdische Laufbahn sie ein paar Bücherphilosophien gelehrt hatte, so hatte dies sie darin zumindest wohlgeübt sein lassen. Doch waren ihre Erfahrungen weniger eine Reihe direkter Enttäuschungen gewesen als eine Reihe von Ersatzleistungen. Immer wieder geschah es, daß das, was sie gewünscht hatte, ihr nicht gewährt wurde, und was ihr gewährt wurde, hatte sie nicht gewünscht. So betrachtete sie mit einem Versuch zur Gleichmut die nun ausgelöschten Tage, da Donald ihr uneingestandener Liebhaber gewesen war, und fragte sich, was für eine ungewünschte Sache ihr wohl der Himmel an seiner Stelle schicken mochte.

Thus Casterbridge was in most respects but the pole, focus, or nerve-knot of the surrounding country life; differing from the many manufacturing towns which are as foreign bodies set down, like boulders on a plain, in a green world with which they have nothing in common.

With peace of mind came development, and with development beauty. Knowledge—the result of great natural insight—she did not lack; learning, accomplishment—those, alas, she had not; but as the winter and spring passed by her thin face and figure filled out in rounder and softer curves; the lines and contractions upon her young brow went away; the muddiness of skin which she had looked upon as her lot by nature departed with a change to abundance of good things, and a bloom came upon her cheek. Perhaps, too, her grey, thoughtful eyes revealed an arch gaiety sometimes; but this was infrequent; the sort of wisdom which looked from their pupils did not readily keep company with these lighter moods. Like all people who have known rough times, light-heartedness seemed to her too irrational and inconsequent to be indulged in except as a reckless dram now and then; for she had been too early habituated to anxious reasoning to drop the habit suddenly. She felt none of those ups and downs of spirit which beset so many people without cause; never—to paraphrase a recent poet—never a gloom in Elizabeth-Jane's soul but she well knew how it came there; and her present cheerfulness was fairly proportionate to her solid guarantees for the same.

The chief - almost only - attraction pf the young woman's face was its mobility. When she looked down sideways to the girl she became pretty, and even handsome, particularly that in the action her features caught slantwise the rays of the strongly coloured sun, which made transparencies of her eyelids and nostrils and set fire on her lips. When she plodded on in the shade of the hedge, silently thinking, she had the hard, half-apathetic expression of one who deems anything possible at the hands of Time and Chance except, perhaps, fair play. The first phase was the work of Nature, the second probably of civilization.

Und so fand sich Henchard in genau der Stellung wieder, die er ein Vierteljahrhundert zuvor eingenommen hatte. Äußerlich gab es nichts, was ihn hinderte, erneut eine Karriere zu beginnen und durch seine gewonnenen Einsichten Höheres zu erlangen, als es sein Geist in seinem halbfertigen Zustand hatte vollbringen können. Doch der von den Göttern erdachte sinnreiche Mechanismus zur Reduzierung der menschlichen Möglichkeiten der Läuterung auf ein Mindestmaß - der dafür sorgt, daß gleichzeitig mit der Klugheit zum Handeln der Verlust der Freude daran kommt - stand alldem im Wege. Er hatte nicht den Wunsch, ein zweites Mal einen Kampfplatz aus einer Welt zu machen, die zu einem bloßen Gemälde für ihn geworden war.

All was over at last, even her regrets for having misunderstood him on his last visit, for not having searched him out sooner, though these were deep and sharp for a good while. From this time forward Elizabeth-Jane found herself in a latitude of calm weather, kindly and grateful in itself, and doubly so after the Capharnaum in which some of her preceding years had been spent. As the lively and sparkling emotions of her early married live cohered into an equable serenity, the finer movements of her nature found scope in discovering to the narrow-lived ones around her the secret (as she had once learnt it) of making limited opportunities endurable; which she deemed to consist in the cunning enlargement, by a species of microscopic treatment, of those minute forms of satisfaction that offer themselves to everybody not in positive pain; which, thus handled, have much of the same inspiring effect upon life as wider interests cursorily embraced.

Well, sir, by all accounts the yeomanry will be put in front.’ ‘Front! That’s what my uncle has been saying.’ ‘Yes, and by all accounts ‘tis true. And naterelly they’ll be mowed down like grass; and you among ‘em, poor young galliant officer!’ ‘Look here, Cripplestraw. This is a reg’lar foolish report. How can yeomanry be put in front? Nobody’s put in front. We yeomanry have nothing to do with Buonaparte’s landing. We shall be away in a safe place, guarding the possessions and jewels. Now, can you see, Cripplestraw, any way at all that the yeomanry can be put in front? Do you think they really can?

The agricultural and pastoral character of the people upon whom the town depended for its existence was shown by the class of objects displayed in the shop windows. Scythes, reap-hooks, sheep-shears, bill-hooks, spades, mattocks, and hoes at the iron-monger’s; bee-hives, butter-firkins, churns, milking stools and pails, hay-rakes, field-flagons, and seed-lips at the cooper’s; cart-ropes and plough-harness at the saddler’s; carts, wheel-barrows, and mill-gear at the wheelwright’s and machinist’s, horse-embrocations at the chemist’s; at the glover’s and leather-cutter’s, hedging-gloves, thatchers’ knee-caps, ploughmen’s leggings, villagers’ pattens and clogs.

Le charme principal, l’unique charme peut-être du visage de la jeune femme était sa mobilité. Quand elle baissait les yeux pour regarder l’enfant, elle devenait jolie et même belle, d’autant que les fauves rayons du couchant, en frappant alors obliquement ses traits, mettaient des transparences délicates sur ses paupières et ses narines, et une flamme sur ses lèvres. Quand, au contraire, elle marchait dans l’ombre de la haie, toute à sa rêverie silencieuse, elle prenait l’expression passive et figée de ceux qui attendent tout du Temps et du Destin, tout sauf un peu de justice. Le premier aspect était l’œuvre de la Nature, le second celui de la civilisation, sans doute.

The hill was covered on its northern side by an ancient and decaying plantation of beeches, whose upper verge formed a line over the crest, fringing its arched curve against the sky, like a mane. To-night these trees sheltered the southern slope from the keenest blasts, which smote the wood and floundered through it with a sound as of grumbling, or gushed over its crowning boughs in a weakened moan. The dry leaves in the ditch simmered and boiled in the same breezes, a tongue of air occasionally ferreting out a few, and sending them spinning across the grass. A group or two of the latest in date amongst the dead multitude had remained till this very mid-winter time on the twigs which bore them and in falling rattled against the trunks with smart taps.

Under coverture, a wife was required to live where her husband demanded, her earnings belonged to her husband and her children were the property of her husband, just as the children of the female slave belonged to her master. But perhaps the most graphic illustration of the continuity between slavery and marriage was that in England – as Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge reminds us – wives could be sold at public auctions.