Jude the Obscure

Famous quotes

• Growing up brought responsibilities, he found. Events did not rhyme quite as he had thought. Nature’s logic was too horrid for him to care for. That mercy towards one set of creatures was cruelty towards another sickened his sense of harmony.

  Part First: At Marygreen, Chapter IIIn context

  • Maturity
  • Nature

• If he could only prevent himself growing up! He did not want to be a man.

  Part First: At Marygreen, Chapter IIIn context

  • Maturity
  • Youth

• But nobody did come, because nobody does

  Part First: At Marygreen, Chapter IVIn context

  • Hope

• Their lives were ruined, he thought; ruined by the fundamental error of their matrimonial union: that of having based a permanent contract on a temporary feeling which had no necessary connection with affinities that alone render a lifelong comradeship tolerable.

  Part First: At Marygreen, Chapter XIIn context

  • Marriage

• Cruelty is the law pervading all nature and society; and we can’t get out of it if we would!

  Part Fifth: At Aldbrickham and Elsewhere, Chapter VIIIIn context

  • Good & Evil
  • Nature

• I am in a chaos of principles⁠—groping in the dark⁠—acting by instinct and not after example. Eight or nine years ago when I came here first, I had a neat stock of fixed opinions, but they dropped away one by one; and the further I get the less sure I am.

  Part Sixth: At Christminster Again, Chapter IIn context

  • Experience
  • Morality

• Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons!

  Pt. VI, ch. IIIIn context

  • Morality

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