Tess of the d’Urbervilles

Famous quotes

• A novel is an impression, not an argument

  Author’s Preface to the Fifth and Later EditionsIn context

  • Writing

• In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving.

  Phase the First: The Maiden, Chapter VIn context

  • Love
  • Time

• Why didn’t you tell me there was danger in men-folk? Why didn’t you warn me? Ladies know what to fend hands against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks; but I never had the chance o’ learning in that way, and you did not help me!

  Phase the Second: Maiden No More, Chapter XIIIn context

  • Men
  • Reading

• Experience is as to intensity, and not as to duration.

  Phase the Third: The Rally, Chapter XIXIn context

  • Experience

• Patience, that blending of moral courage with physical timidity.

  Phase the Fifth: The Woman Pays, ch. XLIIIIn context

  • Courage

• Once victim, always victim⁠—that’s the law!

  Phase the Sixth: The Convert, Chapter XLVIIIn context

  • Justice

• The beauty or ugliness of a character lay not only in its achievements, but in its aims and impulses; its true history lay, not among things done, but among things willed.

  Phase the Sixth: The Convert, Chapter XLIXIn context

  • Character

• Justice” was done, and the President of the Immortals, in Æschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess.

  Phase the Seventh: Fulfilment, Chapter LIXIn context

  • God
  • Justice

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