Bathsheba Everdene Quotes

“He had been held to her by a beautiful thread which it pained him to spoil by breaking, rather than by a chain he could not break.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Don't take on about her, Gabriel. What difference does it make whose sweetheart she is, since she can't be yours?'

'That's the very thing I say to myself,' said Gabriel.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“You know, mistress, that I love you, and shall love you always”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“When the love-led man had ceased from his labours Bathsheba came and looked him in the face.

'Gabriel, will you you stay on with me?' she said, smiling winningly, and not troubling to bring her lips quite together again at the end, because there was going to be another smile soon.

'I will,' said Gabriel.

And she smiled on him again.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and that ordinary women accept husbands because marriage is not possible without possession; with totally differing aims the method is the same on both sides. But the understood incentive on the woman's part was wanting here. Besides, Bathsheba's position as absolute mistress of a farm and house was a novel one, and the novelty had not yet begun to wear off.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Men thin away to insignificance and oblivion quite as often by not making the most of good spirits when they have them as by lacking good spirits when they are indispensable. Gabriel lately, for the first time since his prostration by misfortune, had been independent in thought and vigorous in action to a marked extent-conditions which, powerless without an opportunity as an opportunity without them is barren, would have given him a sure lift upwards when the favourable conjunction should have occurred. But this incurable loitering beside Bathsheba Everdene stole his time ruinously. The spring tides were going by without floating him off, and the neap might soon come which could not.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“But you are too lovely even to care to be kind as others are.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“There are considerations even before my consideration for you; reparations to be made-ties you know nothing of. If you repent of marrying, so do I.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Heaven opened then, indeed. The flash sprang from east, west, north, south, and was a perfect dance of death. The forms of skeletons appeared in the air, shaped with blue fire for bones-- dancing, leaping, striding, and mingling in unparalleled confusion. With these were intertwined snakes of green, rising and falling, and behind these was a broad mass of lesser light. From every part of the tumbling sky came a shout. ... Gabriel was almost blinded, and he could feel Bathsheba's warm arm tremble in his hand-- a sensation new and thrilling. But love, life, everything human, seemed small and trifling beside the spectacle of an infuriated universe.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

“Bathsheba's was an impulsive nature under a deliberative aspect. An Elizabeth in brain, and a Mary Stuart in spirit.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd