Far from the Madding Crowd Quotes

“I hate to be thought men’s property in that way—though possibly I shall be had some day.”

“Well, what I mean is that I shouldn’t mind being a bride at a wedding if I could be one without having a husband. But since a woman can’t show off in that way by herself I shan’t marry—at least yet.”

“Thank God I am not married: what would she have done in the poverty now coming upon me!”

“His being higher in learning and birth than the ruck o’ soldiers is anything but a proof of his worth. It shows his course to be down’ard.”

“I shall never forgive God for making me a woman, and dearly am I beginning to pay for the honour of owning a pretty face.”

“Bathsheba loved Troy in the way that only self-reliant women love when they abandon their self-reliance.”

“The first is that the bailiff is dismissed for thieving, and that I have formed a resolution to have no bailiff at all, but to manage everything with my own head and hands.”

“I’ve danced at your skittish heels, my beautiful Bathsheba, for many a long mile, and many a long day; and it is hard to begrudge me this one visit.”

“He wasn’t quite good enough for me.”

“Your dear love, Bathsheba, is such a vast thing beside your pity that the loss of your pity as well as your love is no great addition to my sorrow, nor does the grain of your pity make it sensibly less.”

“How sweet to be able to disdain, when most of us are glad to say, ‘Thank you!’ I seem to hear it. ‘No sir- I’m your better.‘”

“This fevered hope had grown up again like a grain of mustard-seed during the quiet which followed the hasty conjecture that Troy was drowned.”

“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.”

“The sheep were not insured. –All the savings of a frugal life had been dispersed at a blow: his hopes of being an independent farmer were laid low—possibly for ever.”

“I shall be up before you are awake; I shall be afield before you are up; and I shall have breakfasted before you are afield. In short, I shall astonish you all.”

“Such women as you a hundred men always covet—your eyes will bewitch scores on scores into an unavailing fancy for you—you can only marry one of that many.”

“Men are such constant fools! The rest may try to get over their passion with more or less success.”

“Bathsheba burst into great sobs... but she determined to repress all evidences of feeling. She was conquered; but she would never own it as long as she lived.”

“In those earlier days she had always nourished a secret contempt for girls who were the slaves of the first good-looking young fellow who should choose to salute them.

“I don’t love you and I much fear that I never shall love you as much as a woman ought to love a husband.”