{
  "schemaVersion": 1,
  "slug": "tess-of-the-d-urbervilles-pg110",
  "title": "Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman",
  "quotes": [
    {
      "text": "If an offense come out of\nthe truth, better it is that the offense come than that the truth be concealed."
    },
    {
      "text": "a novel is an impression, not an argument; and\nthere the matter must rest;"
    },
    {
      "text": "As soon as I observe that any\none, when judging of poetical representations, considers anything more\nimportant than the inner Necessity and Truth, I have done with him."
    },
    {
      "text": "The cause of the dispute, therefore, lies in the\nvery first principles, and it would be utterly impossible to come to an\nunderstanding with them."
    },
    {
      "text": "They are those\nwho seek only their own ideas in a representation, and prize that which should\nbe as higher than what is."
    },
    {
      "text": "Such shiftings often begin in sentiment,\nand such sentiment sometimes begins in a novel."
    },
    {
      "text": "days before the\nhabit of taking long views had reduced emotions to a monotonous average."
    },
    {
      "text": "And as each and all of them were warmed without by the sun, so each had a\nprivate little sun for her soul to bask in; some dream, some affection, some\nhobby, at least some remote and distant hope which, though perhaps starving to\nnothing, still lived on, as hopes will."
    },
    {
      "text": "Tess Durbeyfield at this time of her life was a mere vessel of emotion\nuntinctured by experience."
    },
    {
      "text": "Pedigree, ancestral skeletons, monumental record, the d’Urberville\nlineaments, did not help Tess in her life’s battle as yet, even to the\nextent of attracting to her a dancing-partner over the heads of the commonest\npeasantry."
    },
    {
      "text": "The interior, in spite of the melody, struck upon the girl’s senses with\nan unspeakable dreariness."
    },
    {
      "text": "Besides the jar of\ncontrast there came to her a chill self-reproach that she had not returned\nsooner, to help her mother in these domesticities, instead of indulging herself\nout-of-doors."
    },
    {
      "text": "there was a gap of two hundred years as\nordinarily understood. When they were together the Jacobean and the Victorian\nages were juxtaposed."
    },
    {
      "text": "If the heads of the\nDurbeyfield household chose to sail into difficulty, disaster, starvation,\ndisease, degradation, death, thither were these half-dozen little captives\nunder hatches compelled to sail with them"
    },
    {
      "text": "In this process\nthe chamber and its furniture grew more and more dignified and luxurious; the\nshawl hanging at the window took upon itself the richness of tapestry; the\nbrass handles of the chest of drawers were as golden knockers; and the carved\nbedposts seemed to have some kinship with the magnificent pillars of\nSolomon’s temple."
    },
    {
      "text": "’Tis very unlucky that we didn’t pitch on a sound one, when\nthere were so many more of ’em!"
    },
    {
      "text": "The renewed subject, which seemed to have impregnated the whole family, filled\nTess with impatience."
    },
    {
      "text": "In the Durbeyfield countenances there was nothing of the red\nwrath that would have burnt upon the girl from parents more ambitious for her\nwelfare."
    },
    {
      "text": "When it was discovered that the knacker and tanner would give only a very few\nshillings for Prince’s carcase because of his decrepitude, Durbeyfield\nrose to the occasion."
    },
    {
      "text": "Distress, if not penury, loomed in the distance."
    },
    {
      "text": "The oppressive sense of the harm she had done led Tess to be more deferential\nthan she might otherwise have been to the maternal wish;"
    },
    {
      "text": "Her mother’s intelligence was that of a happy child: Joan Durbeyfield was\nsimply an additional one, and that not the eldest, to her own long family of\nwaiters on Providence."
    },
    {
      "text": "Everything on this snug property was bright, thriving, and well kept; acres of\nglass-houses stretched down the inclines to the copses at their feet.\nEverything looked like money—like the last coin issued from the Mint."
    },
    {
      "text": "In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom\nproduces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving."
    },
    {
      "text": "Out of which maladroit delay sprang\nanxieties, disappointments, shocks, catastrophes, and passing-strange\ndestinies."
    },
    {
      "text": "The light-minded\nwoman had been discovering good matches for her daughter almost from the year\nof her birth."
    },
    {
      "text": "It is not me alone. Tib has to be considered, and she has a very\nqueer temper."
    },
    {
      "text": "You artful hussy! Now, tell me—didn’t you make that hat blow\noff on purpose? I’ll swear you did!"
    },
    {
      "text": "She had, in fact, undone the kiss, as far as\nsuch a thing was physically possible."
    },
    {
      "text": "How could she face her parents, get back her box, and disconcert the\nwhole scheme for the rehabilitation of her family on such sentimental grounds?"
    },
    {
      "text": "The\nlower rooms were entirely given over to the birds, who walked about them with a\nproprietary air, as though the place had been built by themselves, and not by\ncertain dusty copyholders who now lay east and west in the churchyard."
    },
    {
      "text": "The\ndescendants of these bygone owners felt it almost as a slight to their family\nwhen the house which had so much of their affection, had cost so much of their\nforefathers’ money, and had been in their possession for several\ngenerations before the d’Urbervilles came and built here, was\nindifferently turned into a fowl-house by Mrs Stoke-d’Urberville as soon\nas the property fell into hand according to law."
    },
    {
      "text": "She had the mobile face\nfrequent in those whose sight has decayed by stages, has been laboriously\nstriven after, and reluctantly let go, rather than the stagnant mien apparent\nin persons long sightless or born blind."
    },
    {
      "text": "It reminded Tess of a Confirmation, in which Mrs d’Urberville was the\nbishop, the fowls the young people presented, and herself and the maid-servant\nthe parson and curate of the parish bringing them up."
    },
    {
      "text": "Mrs d’Urberville was not the first mother compelled to\nlove her offspring resentfully, and to be bitterly fond."
    },
    {
      "text": "The levity of some of the younger women in and about Trantridge was\nmarked, and was perhaps symptomatic of the choice spirit who ruled The Slopes\nin that vicinity."
    },
    {
      "text": "The\nstaple conversation on the farms around was on the uselessness of saving money;\nand smock-frocked arithmeticians, leaning on their ploughs or hoes, would enter\ninto calculations of great nicety to prove that parish relief was a fuller\nprovision for a man in his old age than any which could result from savings out\nof their wages during a whole lifetime."
    },
    {
      "text": "Being graceful and interesting, standing moreover on the\nmomentary threshold of womanhood, her appearance drew down upon her some sly\nregards from loungers in the streets of Chaseborough; hence, though sometimes\nher journey to the town was made independently, she always searched for her\nfellows at nightfall, to have the protection of their companionship homeward."
    },
    {
      "text": "Through\nthis floating, fusty débris of peat and hay, mixed with the\nperspirations and warmth of the dancers, and forming together a sort of\nvegeto-human pollen, the muted fiddles feebly pushed their notes, in marked\ncontrast to the spirit with which the measure was trodden out."
    },
    {
      "text": "They\nwere as sublime as the moon and stars above them, and the moon and stars were\nas ardent as they."
    },
    {
      "text": "Tess, however, had undergone such painful experiences of this kind in her\nfather’s house that the discovery of their condition spoilt the pleasure\nshe was beginning to feel in the moonlight journey."
    },
    {
      "text": "the serpent hisses where the sweet birds sing, and her views of\nlife had been totally changed for her by the lesson."
    },
    {
      "text": "An immeasurable social chasm was to divide our heroine’s\npersonality thereafter from that previous self of hers who stepped from her\nmother’s door to try her fortune at Trantridge poultry-farm."
    },
    {
      "text": "Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and\npractically blank as snow as yet, there should have been traced such a coarse\npattern as it was doomed to receive; why so often the coarse appropriates the\nfiner thus, the wrong man the woman, the wrong woman the man, many thousand\nyears of analytical philosophy have failed to explain to our sense of order."
    },
    {
      "text": "It was to be."
    },
    {
      "text": "I didn’t understand your meaning till it was too late."
    },
    {
      "text": "I have said I will not take anything more from you, and I will\nnot—I cannot! I should be your creature to go on doing that, and I\nwon’t!"
    },
    {
      "text": "She bowed to him slightly, her eye just lingering in his; and then she turned\nto take the parcels for departure."
    },
    {
      "text": "You don’t give me your mouth and kiss me back. You never willingly\ndo that—you’ll never love me, I fear."
    },
    {
      "text": "If I did love\nyou, I may have the best o’ causes for letting you know it. But I\ndon’t."
    },
    {
      "text": "You can hold your\nown for beauty against any woman of these parts, gentle or simple; I say it to\nyou as a practical man and well-wisher."
    },
    {
      "text": "Never, never! I made up my mind as soon as I saw—what I ought to\nhave seen sooner; and I won’t come."
    },
    {
      "text": "Though I do more real work to-day than all the week besides."
    },
    {
      "text": "THY, DAMNATION, SLUMBERETH, NOT."
    },
    {
      "text": "That’s what they are meant to be!"
    },
    {
      "text": "But you should read my hottest ones—them I kips for slums\nand seaports. They’d make ye wriggle!"
    },
    {
      "text": "Pooh—I don’t believe God said such\nthings!"
    },
    {
      "text": "Her mother, who had just come downstairs, turned to\ngreet her from the fireplace, where she was kindling barked-oak twigs under the\nbreakfast kettle."
    },
    {
      "text": "He’s not my cousin, and he’s not going to marry me."
    },
    {
      "text": "Perhaps any woman would except me."
    },
    {
      "text": "I was a child when I left this house four months ago.\nWhy didn’t you tell me there was danger in men-folk? Why didn’t you\nwarn me?"
    },
    {
      "text": "the\nillusion was transient as lightning; cold reason came back to mock her\nspasmodic weakness; the ghastliness of her momentary pride would convict her,\nand recall her to reserved listlessness again."
    },
    {
      "text": "It is then that the\nplight of being alive becomes attenuated to its least possible dimensions."
    },
    {
      "text": "She\nhad no fear of the shadows; her sole idea seemed to be to shun mankind—or\nrather that cold accretion called the world, which, so terrible in the mass, is\nso unformidable, even pitiable, in its units."
    },
    {
      "text": "But all the while she was making a distinction\nwhere there was no difference. Feeling herself in antagonism, she was quite in\naccord."
    },
    {
      "text": "The sun, on account of the mist, had a curious sentient, personal look,\ndemanding the masculine pronoun for its adequate expression."
    },
    {
      "text": "A field-man is a personality afield; a field-woman is a\nportion of the field; she had somehow lost her own margin, imbibed the essence\nof her surrounding, and assimilated herself with it."
    },
    {
      "text": "She felt that she would do well to be\nuseful again—to taste anew sweet independence at any price."
    },
    {
      "text": "The past was\npast; whatever it had been, it was no more at hand."
    },
    {
      "text": "She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of\nsensations, to anybody but herself."
    },
    {
      "text": "Most of the misery had been generated by her conventional\naspect, and not by her innate sensations."
    },
    {
      "text": "There are counterpoises and compensations in life;\nand the event which had made of her a social warning had also for the moment\nmade her the most interesting personage in the village to many."
    },
    {
      "text": "her soul’s desire was to continue that offence by\npreserving the life of the child."
    },
    {
      "text": "The calmness which had possessed Tess since the christening remained with her\nin the infant’s loss."
    },
    {
      "text": "if Providence would not ratify such an\nact of approximation she, for one, did not value the kind of heaven lost by the\nirregularity—either for herself or for her child."
    },
    {
      "text": "But for the world’s opinion those experiences would have\nbeen simply a liberal education."
    },
    {
      "text": "To\nescape the past and all that appertained thereto was to annihilate it, and to\ndo that she would have to get away."
    },
    {
      "text": "Was once lost always lost really true of chastity? she would ask herself. She\nmight prove it false if she could veil bygones."
    },
    {
      "text": "To persons of\nlimited spheres, miles are as geographical degrees, parishes as counties,\ncounties as provinces and kingdoms."
    },
    {
      "text": "She would be the dairymaid\nTess, and nothing more."
    },
    {
      "text": "The irresistible, universal, automatic tendency to find sweet pleasure\nsomewhere, which pervades all life, from the meanest to the highest, had at\nlength mastered Tess."
    },
    {
      "text": "The world was drawn to a larger pattern here. The enclosures\nnumbered fifty acres instead of ten, the farmsteads were more extended, the\ngroups of cattle formed tribes hereabout; there only families."
    },
    {
      "text": "The green lea was speckled as\nthickly with them as a canvas by Van Alsloot or Sallaert with burghers."
    },
    {
      "text": "The river itself, which\nnourished the grass and cows of these renowned dairies, flowed not like the\nstreams in Blackmoor. Those were slow, silent, often turbid; flowing over beds\nof mud into which the incautious wader might sink and vanish unawares. The\nFroom waters were clear as the pure River of Life shown to the Evangelist,\nrapid as the shadow of a cloud, with pebbly shallows that prattled to the sky\nall day long."
    },
    {
      "text": "Either the change in the quality of the air from heavy to light, or the sense\nof being amid new scenes where there were no invidious eyes upon her, sent up\nher spirits wonderfully."
    },
    {
      "text": "Her hopes mingled with the sunshine in an ideal\nphotosphere which surrounded her as she bounded along against the soft south\nwind."
    },
    {
      "text": "The irresistible, universal, automatic tendency to find sweet pleasure\nsomewhere, which pervades all life, from the meanest to the highest, had at\nlength mastered Tess."
    },
    {
      "text": "Such high contentment with such a slight initial performance as that of having\nstarted towards a means of independent living was a part of the Durbeyfield\ntemperament."
    },
    {
      "text": "women do as a rule live through such humiliations, and regain their\nspirits, and again look about them with an interested eye."
    },
    {
      "text": "The milkers formed quite a little battalion of men and maids, the men operating\non the hard-teated animals, the maids on the kindlier natures."
    },
    {
      "text": "It was not the loss for the moment\nthat made slack milking so serious, but that with the decline of demand there\ncame decline, and ultimately cessation, of supply."
    },
    {
      "text": "Songs were often resorted to in dairies hereabout as an enticement to the cows\nwhen they showed signs of withholding their usual yield; and the band of\nmilkers at this request burst into melody—in purely business-like tones,\nit is true, and with no great spontaneity; the result, according to their own\nbelief, being a decided improvement during the song’s continuance."
    },
    {
      "text": "The typical and unvarying Hodge\nceased to exist. He had been disintegrated into a number of varied\nfellow-creatures—beings of many minds, beings infinite in difference"
    },
    {
      "text": "He grew away from old associations, and saw something new in life and humanity."
    },
    {
      "text": "Secondarily, he made close acquaintance with phenomena which he had before\nknown but darkly—the seasons in their moods, morning and evening, night\nand noon, winds in their different tempers, trees, waters and mists, shades and\nsilences, and the voices of inanimate things."
    },
    {
      "text": "before the\nnecessity of taking thought had made the heavens gray"
    },
    {
      "text": "The maids’ private aims, however, were the reverse of the\ndairyman’s rule"
    },
    {
      "text": "Knowing, however, the dairyman’s wish, she\nendeavoured conscientiously to take the animals just as they came, excepting\nthe very hard yielders which she could not yet manage."
    },
    {
      "text": "The perception arrested him less when he\nreflected that what are called advanced ideas are really in great part but the\nlatest fashion in definition—a more accurate expression, by words in\nlogy and ism, of sensations which men and women have vaguely\ngrasped for centuries."
    },
    {
      "text": "Not guessing the\ncause, there was nothing to remind him that experience is as to intensity, and\nnot as to duration."
    },
    {
      "text": "Tess’s passing corporeal blight had been her mental\nharvest."
    },
    {
      "text": "The best is not to remember that your nature and your past\ndoings have been just like thousands’ and thousands’, and that your\ncoming life and doings ’ll be like thousands’ and\nthousands’."
    },
    {
      "text": "They met daily in that strange\nand solemn interval, the twilight of the morning, in the violet or pink dawn;\nfor it was necessary to rise early, so very early, here."
    },
    {
      "text": "In the twilight of the\nmorning, light seems active, darkness passive; in the twilight of evening it is\nthe darkness which is active and crescent, and the light which is the drowsy\nreverse."
    },
    {
      "text": "She was no\nlonger the milkmaid, but a visionary essence of woman—a whole sex\ncondensed into one typical form."
    },
    {
      "text": "Then it would grow lighter, and her features would become simply feminine; they\nhad changed from those of a divinity who could confer bliss to those of a being\nwho craved it."
    },
    {
      "text": "The evening sun was now ugly to her, like a great inflamed wound in\nthe sky."
    },
    {
      "text": "She was wretched—O so wretched—at the perception that\nto her companions the dairyman’s story had been rather a humorous\nnarration than otherwise; none of them but herself seemed to see the sorrow of\nit; to a certainty, not one knew how cruelly it touched the tender place in her\nexperience."
    },
    {
      "text": "Being more finely formed,\nbetter educated, and, though the youngest except Retty, more woman than either,\nshe perceived that only the slightest ordinary care was necessary for holding\nher own in Angel Clare’s heart against these her candid friends."
    },
    {
      "text": "Such unequal\nattachments had led to marriage; and she had heard from Mrs Crick that Mr Clare\nhad one day asked, in a laughing way, what would be the use of his marrying a\nfine lady, and all the while ten thousand acres of Colonial pasture to feed,\nand cattle to rear, and corn to reap. A farm-woman would be the only sensible\nkind of wife for him."
    },
    {
      "text": "They crept and crept, the hem of her petticoat\njust touching his gaiter, and his elbow sometimes brushing hers."
    },
    {
      "text": "He knew that the water had\nrisen at that spot, and that it would quite check their progress. So he had\nhastened on, with a dim idea of how he could help them—one of them in\nparticular."
    },
    {
      "text": "the\nmagnitude of lives is not as to their external displacements, but as to their\nsubjective experiences."
    },
    {
      "text": "The impressionable peasant leads a larger, fuller, more\ndramatic life than the pachydermatous king."
    },
    {
      "text": "Upon her sensations the whole world depended to Tess; through her\nexistence all her fellow-creatures existed, to her."
    },
    {
      "text": "The universe itself only\ncame into being for Tess on the particular day in the particular year in which\nshe was born."
    },
    {
      "text": "The full recognition of the futility of their\ninfatuation, from a social point of view; its purposeless beginning; its\nself-bounded outlook; its lack of everything to justify its existence in the\neye of civilization (while lacking nothing in the eye of Nature); the one fact\nthat it did exist, ecstasizing them to a killing joy—all this imparted to\nthem a resignation, a dignity, which a practical and sordid expectation of\nwinning him as a husband would have destroyed."
    },
    {
      "text": "Despite his heterodoxy, faults, and weaknesses, Clare was a man with a\nconscience. Tess was no insignificant creature to toy with and dismiss; but a\nwoman living her precious life—a life which, to herself who endured or\nenjoyed it, possessed as great a dimension as the life of the mightiest to\nhimself."
    },
    {
      "text": "To encounter her daily in the accustomed manner would be to develop what had\nbegun. Living in such close relations, to meet meant to fall into endearment;\nflesh and blood could not resist it; and, having arrived at no conclusion as to\nthe issue of such a tendency, he decided to hold aloof for the present from\noccupations in which they would be mutually engaged."
    },
    {
      "text": "He loved her; ought he to marry her? Dared he to marry her? What would his\nmother and his brothers say? What would he himself say a couple of years after\nthe event? That would depend upon whether the germs of staunch comradeship\nunderlay the temporary emotion, or whether it were a sensuous joy in her form\nonly, with no substratum of everlastingness."
    },
    {
      "text": "The\nNew Testament was less a Christiad then a Pauliad to his\nintelligence—less an argument than an intoxication."
    },
    {
      "text": "He despised the Canons and Rubric, swore by the\nArticles, and deemed himself consistent through the whole category—which\nin a way he might have been. One thing he certainly was—sincere."
    },
    {
      "text": "To the aesthetic, sensuous, pagan pleasure in natural life and lush womanhood\nwhich his son Angel had lately been experiencing in Var Vale, his temper would\nhave been antipathetic in a high degree, had he either by inquiry or\nimagination been able to apprehend it."
    },
    {
      "text": "Latterly he had seen only Life, felt only the great\npassionate pulse of existence, unwarped, uncontorted, untrammelled by those\ncreeds which futilely attempt to check what wisdom would be content to\nregulate."
    },
    {
      "text": "On their part they saw a great difference in him, a growing divergence from the\nAngel Clare of former times. It was chiefly a difference in his manner that\nthey noticed just now, particularly his brothers. He was getting to behave like\na farmer; he flung his legs about; the muscles of his face had grown more\nexpressive; his eyes looked as much information as his tongue spoke, and more."
    },
    {
      "text": "If these two noticed Angel’s growing social ineptness, he noticed their\ngrowing mental limitations."
    },
    {
      "text": "Neither saw the difference between local truth and universal truth;\nthat what the inner world said in their clerical and academic hearing was quite\na different thing from what the outer world was thinking."
    },
    {
      "text": "Was it not proved nineteen\nhundred years ago—if I may trespass upon your domain a little? Why should\nyou think, Felix, that I am likely to drop my high thinking and my moral\nideals?"
    },
    {
      "text": "A truly Christian woman, who will be a help and a comfort to you in your\ngoings-out and your comings-in. Beyond that, it really matters little."
    },
    {
      "text": "But ought she not primarily to be able to milk cows, churn good butter,\nmake immense cheeses; know how to sit hens and turkeys and rear chickens, to\ndirect a field of labourers in an emergency, and estimate the value of sheep\nand calves?"
    },
    {
      "text": "As to external accomplishments, what will be the use of them in the life\nI am going to lead?—while as to her reading, I can take that in hand.\nShe’ll be apt pupil enough, as you would say if you knew her. She’s\nbrim full of poetry—actualized poetry, if I may use the expression. She\nlives what paper-poets only write..."
    },
    {
      "text": "It was probable that, in the lapse of ages, improved systems\nof moral and intellectual training would appreciably, perhaps considerably,\nelevate the involuntary and even the unconscious instincts of human nature; but\nup to the present day, culture, as far as he could see, might be said to have\naffected only the mental epiderm of those lives which had been brought under\nits influence."
    },
    {
      "text": "This belief was confirmed by his experience of women, which,\nhaving latterly been extended from the cultivated middle-class into the rural\ncommunity, had taught him how much less was the intrinsic difference between\nthe good and wise woman of one social stratum and the good and wise woman of\nanother social stratum, than between the good and bad, the wise and the\nfoolish, of the same stratum or class."
    },
    {
      "text": "He would have been an awkward\nmember of the party; for, though the most appreciative humanist, the most ideal\nreligionist, even the best-versed Christologist of the three, there was\nalienation in the standing consciousness that his squareness would not fit the\nround hole that had been prepared for him."
    },
    {
      "text": "Politically I am sceptical as to the virtue of their\nbeing old. Some of the wise even among themselves ‘exclaim against their\nown succession,’ as Hamlet puts it; but lyrically, dramatically, and even\nhistorically, I am tenderly attached to them."
    },
    {
      "text": "The\nbrim-fulness of her nature breathed from her."
    },
    {
      "text": "It was a moment when a\nwoman’s soul is more incarnate than at any other time; when the most\nspiritual beauty bespeaks itself flesh; and sex takes the outside place in the\npresentation."
    },
    {
      "text": "She had come to\nTalbothays with a made-up mind. On no account could she agree to a step which\nmight afterwards cause bitter rueing to her husband for his blindness in\nwedding her."
    },
    {
      "text": "Reckless,\ninconsiderate acceptance of him; to close with him at the altar, revealing\nnothing, and chancing discovery; to snatch ripe pleasure before the iron teeth\nof pain could have time to shut upon her: that was what love counselled;"
    },
    {
      "text": "It all turned on that release."
    },
    {
      "text": "What had given her strength to refuse him this\ntime was solely the tale of the widow told by the dairyman; and that would have\nbeen overcome in another moment."
    },
    {
      "text": "There are very few women’s lives that are\nnot—tremulous,"
    },
    {
      "text": "I—I—am not a Durbeyfield, but a d’Urberville—a\ndescendant of the same family as those that owned the old house we passed.\nAnd—we are all gone to nothing!"
    },
    {
      "text": "Well—why should I love you less after knowing this?"
    },
    {
      "text": "I do hate the aristocratic principle of\nblood before everything, and do think that as reasoners the only pedigrees we\nought to respect are those spiritual ones of the wise and virtuous, without\nregard to corporal paternity."
    },
    {
      "text": "Society is hopelessly snobbish, and this fact of your extraction may make an\nappreciable difference to its acceptance of you as my wife,"
    },
    {
      "text": "The secret is out, so why should you any longer\nrefuse me?"
    },
    {
      "text": "She dismissed the past—trod upon it and put it out, as one treads on a\ncoal that is smouldering and dangerous."
    },
    {
      "text": "A spiritual forgetfulness co-existed with an intellectual remembrance. She\nwalked in brightness, but she knew that in the background those shapes of\ndarkness were always spread."
    },
    {
      "text": "Distinction does not\nconsist in the facile use of a contemptible set of conventions, but in being\nnumbered among those who are true, and honest, and just, and pure, and lovely,\nand of good report—as you are, my Tess."
    },
    {
      "text": "He sat on by the cheerful firelight thrown from a bundle of green ash-sticks\nlaid across the dogs; the sticks snapped pleasantly, and hissed out bubbles of\nsap from their ends."
    },
    {
      "text": "’tis always mournful not to be wanted, even if at the same time\n’tis convenient."
    },
    {
      "text": "She hated the thought, and she hated more the thought of going home."
    },
    {
      "text": "He loved her\ndearly, though perhaps rather ideally and fancifully than with the impassioned\nthoroughness of her feeling for him."
    },
    {
      "text": "The secret lay in the tinge of recklessness\nimparted to his career and character by the sense that he had been made to miss\nhis true destiny through the prejudices of his family."
    },
    {
      "text": "She who had been so backward\nwas suddenly fired with impatience and alarm lest she should lose her dear\nprize."
    },
    {
      "text": "The mountain had not yet been removed."
    },
    {
      "text": "I do not, Tessy, really."
    },
    {
      "text": "She was a sort of\ncelestial person, who owed her being to poetry—one of those classical\ndivinities Clare was accustomed to talk to her about when they took their walks\ntogether."
    },
    {
      "text": "This condition of mind, wherein she felt glorified by an irradiation not her\nown, like the angel whom St John saw in the sun, lasted till the sound of the\nchurch bells had died away, and the emotions of the wedding-service had calmed\ndown."
    },
    {
      "text": "He knew that she did, and the words had no serious intent; but she was\nsurcharged with emotion, and winced like a wounded animal."
    },
    {
      "text": "As everybody knows, fine feathers make fine birds; a peasant girl but very\nmoderately prepossessing to the casual observer in her simple condition and\nattire will bloom as an amazing beauty if clothed as a woman of fashion with\nthe aids that Art can render;"
    },
    {
      "text": "She had deserved worse—yet she was the chosen one.\nIt was wicked of her to take all without paying. She would pay to the uttermost\nfarthing; she would tell, there and then."
    },
    {
      "text": "the essence of things had changed."
    },
    {
      "text": "The cruelty of fooled honesty is often great after enlightenment,"
    },
    {
      "text": "The little less, and what worlds away!"
    },
    {
      "text": "Nothing so pure, so sweet, so\nvirginal as Tess had seemed possible all the long while that he had adored her,\nup to an hour ago; but\n\nThe little less, and what worlds away!"
    },
    {
      "text": "He was simply regarding the harrowing contingencies of human\nexperience, the unexpectedness of things."
    },
    {
      "text": "The pair were, in truth, but the ashes of their former fires."
    },
    {
      "text": "Nature, in her fantastic trickery, had set such a\nseal of maidenhood upon Tess’s countenance that he gazed at her with a\nstupefied air."
    },
    {
      "text": "his affection itself was\nless fire than radiance, and, with regard to the other sex, when he ceased to\nbelieve he ceased to follow:"
    },
    {
      "text": "Sheer\nexperience had already taught her that in some circumstances there was one\nthing better than to lead a good life, and that was to be saved from leading\nany life whatever."
    },
    {
      "text": "With these natures, corporal presence is something less\nappealing than corporal absence; the latter creating an ideal presence that\nconveniently drops the defects of the real."
    },
    {
      "text": "Moreover, when two people are\nonce parted—have abandoned a common domicile and a common\nenvironment—new growths insensibly bud upward to fill each vacated place;"
    },
    {
      "text": "Self-solicitude was near extinction in her, and\nin the knowledge that he had planned to depart on the morrow, possibly for\nalways, she lay in his arms in this precarious position with a sense rather of\nluxury than of terror."
    },
    {
      "text": "It was consoling, under the hovering terror of to-morrow’s\nseparation, to feel that he really recognized her now as his wife Tess, and did\nnot cast her off, even if in that recognition he went so far as to arrogate to\nhimself the right of harming her."
    },
    {
      "text": "The swift stream raced and gyrated under them, tossing, distorting, and\nsplitting the moon’s reflected face."
    },
    {
      "text": "He thus\nbeheld in the pale morning light the resolve to separate from her; not as a hot\nand indignant instinct, but denuded of the passionateness which had made it\nscorch and burn; standing in its bones; nothing but a skeleton, but none the\nless there."
    },
    {
      "text": "Pride, too, entered into her\nsubmission—which perhaps was a symptom of that reckless acquiescence in\nchance too apparent in the whole d’Urberville family—and the many\neffective chords which she could have stirred by an appeal were left untouched."
    },
    {
      "text": "God’s not in his heaven: All’s wrong with the world!"
    },
    {
      "text": "As if to bring matters to a focus, Tess’s father was heard approaching at\nthat moment. He did not, however, enter immediately, and Mrs Durbeyfield said\nthat she would break the bad news to him herself, Tess keeping out of sight for\nthe present."
    },
    {
      "text": "The picture of life had changed for him. Before this time he had known it but\nspeculatively; now he thought he knew it as a practical man"
    },
    {
      "text": "Nevertheless humanity stood before him no longer in the\npensive sweetness of Italian art, but in the staring and ghastly attitudes of a\nWiertz Museum"
    },
    {
      "text": "This was what he had got by apostasy, and his\npunishment was deserved"
    },
    {
      "text": "In considering what Tess\nwas not, he overlooked what she was, and forgot that the defective can be more\nthan the entire"
    },
    {
      "text": "No prophet had told him, and he was not prophet enough to tell\nhimself, that essentially this young wife of his was as deserving of the praise\nof King Lemuel as any other woman endowed with the same dislike of evil"
    },
    {
      "text": "the figure near at hand suffers on such occasion, because it shows up its\nsorriness without shade; while vague figures afar off are honoured, in that\ntheir distance makes artistic virtues of their stains"
    },
    {
      "text": "Why not be revenged on society by shaping his\nfuture domesticities loosely, instead of kissing the pedagogic rod of\nconvention in this ensnaring manner"
    },
    {
      "text": "Women may be bad, but they are not so bad as men\nin these things!"
    },
    {
      "text": "The\nwife of Angel Clare put her hand to her brow, and felt its curve, and the edges\nof her eye-sockets perceptible under the soft skin, and thought as she did so\nthat a time would come when that bone would be bare."
    },
    {
      "text": "She had occasionally caught glimpses of these men in girlhood, looking over\nhedges, or peeping through bushes, and pointing their guns, strangely\naccoutred, a bloodthirsty light in their eyes."
    },
    {
      "text": "With the impulse of a soul who could feel for kindred sufferers as much as for\nherself, Tess’s first thought was to put the still living birds out of\ntheir torture,"
    },
    {
      "text": "But that she could not do so long as it was held by Clare."
    },
    {
      "text": "Patience, that blending of moral courage with physical\ntimidity, was now no longer a minor feature in Mrs Angel Clare; and it\nsustained her."
    },
    {
      "text": "The wall seemed\nto be the only friend she had. She had so little wish to leave it that she\ncould have stayed there all night."
    },
    {
      "text": "There are degrees of dampness, and a very little is called being wet\nthrough in common talk. But to stand working slowly in a field, and feel the\ncreep of rain-water, first in legs and shoulders, then on hips and head, then\nat back, front, and sides, and yet to work on till the leaden light diminishes\nand marks that the sun is down, demands a distinct modicum of stoicism, even of\nvalour."
    },
    {
      "text": "So these two upper and nether visages confronted each other\nall day long, the white face looking down on the brown face, and the brown face\nlooking up at the white face, without anything standing between them but the\ntwo girls crawling over the surface of the former like flies."
    },
    {
      "text": "The sky wore,\nin another colour, the same likeness; a white vacuity of countenance with the\nlineaments gone."
    },
    {
      "text": "they lived all this afternoon in\nmemories of green, sunny, romantic Talbothays."
    },
    {
      "text": "Instead of answering, Tess, with tears in her eyes, impulsively faced in the\ndirection in which she imagined South America to lie, and, putting up her lips,\nblew out a passionate kiss upon the snowy wind."
    },
    {
      "text": "Beauty to her, as to all who have\nfelt, lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized."
    },
    {
      "text": "She lay in a state of\npercipience without volition, and the rustle of the straw and the cutting of\nthe ears by the others had the weight of bodily touches."
    },
    {
      "text": "She had set herself to stand or fall by her qualities, and to waive such merely\ntechnical claims upon a strange family as had been established for her by the\nflimsy fact of a member of that family, in a season of impulse, writing his\nname in a church-book beside hers."
    },
    {
      "text": "In jumping at Publicans\nand Sinners they would forget that a word might be said for the worries of\nScribes and Pharisees; and this defect or limitation might have recommended\ntheir own daughter-in-law to them at this moment as a fairly choice sort of\nlost person for their love."
    },
    {
      "text": "Her present condition was precisely one which would have enlisted the\nsympathies of old Mr and Mrs Clare. Their hearts went out of them at a bound\ntowards extreme cases, when the subtle mental troubles of the less desperate\namong mankind failed to win their interest or regard."
    },
    {
      "text": "The greater the sinner, the greater the saint; it\nwas not necessary to dive far into Christian history to discover that."
    },
    {
      "text": "It was but the usage of thought which had been jarred in her at hearing good\nnew words in bad old notes."
    },
    {
      "text": "The former curves of sensuousness\nwere now modulated to lines of devotional passion."
    },
    {
      "text": "the break of continuity between\nher earlier and present existence, which she had hoped for, had not, after all,\ntaken place."
    },
    {
      "text": "Bygones would never be complete bygones till she was a bygone\nherself."
    },
    {
      "text": "He who had wrought her undoing was now on the side of the Spirit,\nwhile she remained unregenerate."
    },
    {
      "text": "I have come with that sole purpose in view—nothing\nmore."
    },
    {
      "text": "Such flashes as you feel, Alec, I fear don’t\nlast!"
    },
    {
      "text": "It was put up in wuld times by the relations of a malefactor who was\ntortured there by nailing his hand to a post and afterwards hung. The bones lie\nunderneath."
    },
    {
      "text": "You were well dressed, and I did not think of it. But I\nsee now that it is hard—harder than it used to be when I—knew\nyou—harder than you deserve."
    },
    {
      "text": "The whole blame\nwas mine—the whole unconventional business of our time at Trantridge."
    },
    {
      "text": "I say in all earnestness that it is a\nshame for parents to bring up their girls in such dangerous ignorance of the\ngins and nets that the wicked may set for them, whether their motive be a good\none or the result of simple indifference."
    },
    {
      "text": "duty and desire ran hand-in-hand."
    },
    {
      "text": "I love somebody else."
    },
    {
      "text": "He is so unpleasant to me."
    },
    {
      "text": "I have been cured of the presumption of thinking otherwise."
    },
    {
      "text": "Your mind is enslaved to his."
    },
    {
      "text": "What’s good enough for him\nis good enough for me."
    },
    {
      "text": "I was on the way to, at\nleast, social salvation till I saw you again!"
    },
    {
      "text": "The drops of logic Tess had let fall into the sea of his enthusiasm served to\nchill its effervescence to stagnation."
    },
    {
      "text": "Once\nvictim, always victim—that’s the law!"
    },
    {
      "text": "I am more taken with you than ever, and I pity you too."
    },
    {
      "text": "If you are any\nman’s wife you are mine!"
    },
    {
      "text": "The punishment you have measured out\nto me is deserved—I do know that—well deserved—and you are\nright and just to be angry with me."
    },
    {
      "text": "I live entirely for you. I love you too much to blame you for going\naway,"
    },
    {
      "text": "I am the same woman, Angel, as you fell in love with; yes,\nthe very same!—not the one you disliked but never saw."
    },
    {
      "text": "I became another\nwoman, filled full of new life from you."
    },
    {
      "text": "The beauty or\nugliness of a character lay not only in its achievements, but in its aims and\nimpulses; its true history lay, not among things done, but among things willed."
    },
    {
      "text": "Despite her not inviolate past, what still abode in such a woman as Tess\noutvalued the freshness of her fellows."
    },
    {
      "text": "The mistake of expressing them had arisen from his allowing\nhimself to be influenced by general principles to the disregard of the\nparticular instance."
    },
    {
      "text": "Men are too often harsh with women they love or have loved; women with men."
    },
    {
      "text": "So does Time ruthlessly destroy his own romances."
    },
    {
      "text": "Violent motion\nrelieved thought."
    },
    {
      "text": "Nightfall, which in the frost of winter comes as a fiend and in\nthe warmth of summer as a lover, came as a tranquillizer on this March day."
    },
    {
      "text": "So do flux and reflux—the\nrhythm of change—alternate and persist in everything under the sky."
    },
    {
      "text": "Whatever her sins, they were not sins of intention, but of\ninadvertence, and why should she have been punished so persistently?"
    },
    {
      "text": "To her and her like, birth itself was an ordeal of degrading personal\ncompulsion, whose gratuitousness nothing in the result seemed to justify,"
    },
    {
      "text": "It was not her husband, she had said. Yet a consciousness that in a physical\nsense this man alone was her husband seemed to weigh on her more and more."
    },
    {
      "text": "They were only women; they were not regular labourers; they were not\nparticularly required anywhere; hence they had to hire a waggon at their own\nexpense, and got nothing sent gratuitously."
    },
    {
      "text": "A wet Lady-Day was a spectre which removing families never\nforgot; damp furniture, damp bedding, damp clothing accompanied it, and left a\ntrain of ills."
    },
    {
      "text": "The groundwork of the arrangement was the family dresser,\nwhich, with its shining handles, and finger-marks, and domestic evidences thick\nupon it, stood importantly in front, over the tails of the shaft-horses, in its\nerect and natural position, like some Ark of the Covenant that they were bound\nto carry reverently."
    },
    {
      "text": "The\ncontrast well marked the difference between being fetched by a thriving farmer\nand conveying oneself whither no hirer waited one’s coming."
    },
    {
      "text": "Of all\nthe reminders that she had ever received that her people were socially extinct,\nthere was none so forcible as this spoliation."
    },
    {
      "text": "The old order changeth. The little finger of the sham d’Urberville\ncan do more for you than the whole dynasty of the real underneath...."
    },
    {
      "text": "What woman, indeed, among\nthe most faithful adherents of the truth, believes the promises and threats of\nthe Word in the sense in which she believes in her own children, or would not\nthrow her theology to the wind if weighed against their happiness?"
    },
    {
      "text": "She was passionate, and her present letter,\nshowing that her estimate of him had changed under his delay—too justly\nchanged, he sadly owned,—made him ask himself if it would be wise to\nconfront her unannounced in the presence of her parents."
    },
    {
      "text": "He had undergone some strange experiences in his\nabsence; he had seen the virtual Faustina in the literal Cornelia, a spiritual\nLucretia in a corporeal Phryne; he had thought of the woman taken and set in\nthe midst as one deserving to be stoned, and of the wife of Uriah being made a\nqueen; and he had asked himself why he had not judged Tess constructively\nrather than biographically, by the will rather than by the deed?"
    },
    {
      "text": "I must cry to you in my trouble—I have no one else!"
    },
    {
      "text": "please, please, not\nto be just—only a little kind to me."
    },
    {
      "text": "I would be content, ay,\nglad, to live with you as your servant, if I may not as your wife; so that I\ncould only be near you, and get glimpses of you, and think of you as mine...."
    },
    {
      "text": "I long for only one thing in heaven or earth or under the earth, to meet you,\nmy own dear!"
    },
    {
      "text": "The house in which Tess had passed the years of her childhood was now inhabited\nby another family who had never known her."
    },
    {
      "text": "Even the spring birds sang over their\nheads as if they thought there was nobody missing in particular."
    },
    {
      "text": "How are the Mighty Fallen."
    },
    {
      "text": "Where could Tess possibly be, a cottage-girl, his young wife, amidst all this\nwealth and fashion?"
    },
    {
      "text": "She seemed to feel like a fugitive in a dream, who tries to move away, but\ncannot."
    },
    {
      "text": "he had a\nvague consciousness of one thing, though it was not clear to him till later;\nthat his original Tess had spiritually ceased to recognize the body before him\nas hers—allowing it to drift, like a corpse upon the current, in a\ndirection dissociated from its living will."
    },
    {
      "text": "And then my dear, dear husband came home to me ... and I did not\nknow it!... And you had used your cruel persuasion upon me ... you did\nnot stop using it—no—you did not stop!"
    },
    {
      "text": "And at last\nI believed you and gave way!... And then he came back! Now he is gone.\nGone a second time, and I have lost him now for ever ... and he will not\nlove me the littlest bit ever any more—only hate me!"
    },
    {
      "text": "And my sin will kill him and not kill me!... O, you\nhave torn my life all to pieces ... made me be what I prayed you in pity\nnot to make me be again!"
    },
    {
      "text": "I am not\ngoing to think outside of now. Why should we! Who knows what to-morrow has in\nstore?"
    },
    {
      "text": "All is trouble outside there; inside here\ncontent."
    },
    {
      "text": "I would rather be dead and buried\nwhen the time comes for you to despise me, so that it may never be known to me\nthat you despised me."
    },
    {
      "text": "Tenderness was absolutely dominant in Clare at last."
    },
    {
      "text": "He was still her Antinous, her\nApollo even; his sickly face was beautiful as the morning to her affectionate\nregard on this day no less than when she first beheld him;"
    },
    {
      "text": "It is Stonehenge!"
    },
    {
      "text": "Older than the centuries; older than the d’Urbervilles!"
    },
    {
      "text": "It seems as if there were no folk in the world but we two; and I wish\nthere were not—except ’Liza-Lu."
    },
    {
      "text": "This happiness could not have lasted. It was too much. I\nhave had enough; and now I shall not live for you to despise me!"
    },
    {
      "text": "this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO\nOTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT\nLIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE."
    },
    {
      "text": "Project Gutenberg is synonymous with the free distribution of\nelectronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of\ncomputers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers."
    },
    {
      "text": "Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the\nassistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg’s\ngoals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg collection will\nremain freely available for generations to come."
    }
  ]
}