I am the family face; flesh perishes, I live on, projecting trait and trace through time to times anon, and leaping from place to place over oblivion. – Thomas Hardy
Persons with weight of character carry, like planets, their atmospheres along with them in their orbits. – Thomas Hardy
Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art. – Thomas Hardy
Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle. – Thomas Hardy
But America is a great, unwieldy Body. Its Progress must be slow. It is like a large Fleet sailing under Convoy. The fleetest Sailors must wait for the dullest and slowest. Like a Coach and sixthe swiftest Horses must be slackened and the slowest quickened, that all may keep an even Pace. – John Adams