Important and Philosophical quotes of "Tess of the D'Urbervilles".

The trees have inquisitive eyes, haven’t they? –that is seem as if they had. And the river says—why do you trouble me with your looks? And you seem to see number of tomorrow just all in line, the first of them the biggest and the clearest, the others getting smaller and smaller as they stand farther away; but they all seem very fierce and cruel and as if they said, I am coming! Beware of me Beware of me ..(p-146)

Sometime I feel I don’t want to know anything more about it than I know already. (P-149)

I shouldn’t mind learning why –why the sun do shine one the just and the unjust alike, she answered with a single quaver in her voice. But that’s what books will not tell me. (P-149)

The place having been rather hastily prepared for them they washed their hands in one basin. Clear touched hers under the water. Which are my fingers and which yours?   He said looking up. They are very much mixed. They are all yours said she very prettily, and endeavored to be gayer than she was.

Such was their childishness, or rather his, that he found it interesting to use the same bread-and-butter plate as herself, and to brush and crumbs from her lips with his own. He wondered a little that she did not enter into these frivolities with his own zest . (xxxiv, p-248)

“ Do I realize solemnly enough how utterly and irretrievably this little womanly thing is the creature of good or bad faith and fortune? I think not, I think I could not, unless  I were woman myself. What I am in worldly estate, she is. What I become, she must become. What I cannot be, she cannot be. And shall I ever neglect her, or  hurt her, or even forget to consider her? God forbid such a crime.(xxxiv, p-248)

‘O Tess forgiveness does not apply to this case! You were one person; now you are another. My God –how can forgiveness meet such a grotesque – prestidigitation as that!’ (xxxv, p-259)

‘ I thought, Angel, that you loved me-me, my very self! If it is I you do love, O how can it be that you look and speak so? It frightens me! Having began to love you, I love you for ever –in all changes, in all disgraces, because you are husband, stop loving me?

"I repeat, the woman I have been loving is not you."

"But who?"              

"Another woman in your shape." (xxxv, p-260)

Behold, when thy face is made bare, he that loved thee shall hate; Thy face shall be no more fair at the fall of thy fate For thy life shall fall as a leaf and be shed as the rain; And the veil of thine head shall be grief, and the crown shall be pain.(xxxv, p-263)

"You were more sinned against than sinning, that I admit." (xxxv, p-263)

“different manners. You almost make me say you are an unapprehending peasant woman, who have never been initiated into the proportions of social things. You don't know what you say."

"I am only a peasant by position, not by nature!" (xxxv, p-264)

"I don't see how I can help being the cause of much misery to you all your life. The river is down there. I can put an end to myself in it. I am not afraid." (xxxv, p-265)

The night came in, and took up its place there, unconcerned and indifferent; the night which had already swallowed up his happiness, and was now digesting it listlessly; and was ready to swallow up the happiness of a thousand other people with as little disturbance or change of mien. (xxxv, p-267)

 Moreover, when two people are once parted--have abandoned a common domicile and a common environment--new growths insensibly bud upward to fill each vacated place; unforeseen accidents hinder intentions, and old plans are forgotten.(xxxvi, p-279)

"My poor, poor Tess--my dearest, darling Tess! So sweet, so good, so true!" (xxxvii, p-280)

"I agree to the conditions, Angel; because you know best what my punishment ought to be; only--only--don't make it more than I can bear!"(xxxvii, p-287)

God's NOT in his heaven: all's WRONG with the world! (xxxvii, p-288)

The perfect woman, you see, was a working woman; not an idler; not a fine lady; but one who used her hands and her head and her heart for the good of others.(xxxix, p-298)

 "All is vanity." She repeated the words mechanically, till she reflected that this was a most inadequate thought for modern days. Solomon had thought as far as that more than two thousand years ago; she herself, though not in the van of thinkers, had got much further. If all were only vanity, who would mind it? All was, alas, worse than vanity--injustice, punishment, exaction, death. (xli, p-313)

"Poor darlings--to suppose myself the most miserable being on earth in the sight o' such misery as yours!" she exclaimed, her tears running down as she killed the birds tenderly. "And not a twinge of bodily pain about me! I be not mangled, and I be not bleeding, and I have two hands to feed and clothe me." She was ashamed of herself for her gloom of the night, based on nothing more tangible than a sense of condemnation under an arbitrary law of society which had no foundation in Nature.(xli, p-315)

 Once victim, always victim--that's the law!" (xlvii,p-373)

Arise, arise, arise!
And pick your love a posy,
All o' the sweetest flowers
That in the garden grow.
The turtle doves and sma' birds
In every bough a-building,
So early in the May-time
At the break o' the day! (xlix, p-385)

 Even the spring birds sang over their heads as if they thought there was nobody missing in particular.(xliv, p-417)

What a fluty voice one of those milkmaids has! I suppose it the new one. P-141

What a fresh and virginal daughter of nature that milkmaid is! He said to himself. P-142 

                                                                                                            

The two speechless gazers bent themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and remained thus a long time, absolutely motionless: the flag continued to wave silently. As soon as they had strength they arose, joined hands again, and went on.(lix,p-446)

Tess was taken completely by surprise, and she yielded to his embrace with unreflecting inevitableness. Having seen that it was really her lover who had advanced, and no one else, her lips parted, and she sank upon him in her momentary joy, with something vary like ecstatic cry.

He had been on the point of kissing that too tempting mouth, but he checked himself, for tender conscience’ sake.

‘ Forgive me, Tess dear!’ he whispered. ‘I ought to have asked. I –did not know what I was doing. I do not mean it is liberty. I am devoted to you, Tessy, dearest , in all sincerity! (xxiv, p-175)

Angel had come as pupil to this dairy in the idea that his temporary existence here was to be the merest episode in  his life, soon passed through and early forgotten; he had come calmly view the absorbing world without, and , apostrophizing it with Whitman-

                   “Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes,

                   How curious you are to me” (xxv, p-177)

Her mother’s balled of the mystic robe --

“That never would become that wife

That had once done amiss” (xxxii, p-236)