One is apt to be discouraged by the frequency with which Mr. Hardy has persuaded himself that a macabre subject is a poem in itsel...f; that, if there be enough of death and the tomb in one's theme, it needs no translation into art, the bold statement of it being sufficient.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The great novels of sex of the nineteenth century were those of Thomas Hardy. By comparison, Lawrence's books are more subtle and ...more revealing. Hardy was interested in the results of the sex impulses as they display themselves in normal life. Sex wrecks Jude; sex ennobles and ruins Tess. Lawrence is not much interested in results. When sex is triumphant in Alvina, the lost girl, the story ends. Her story is just beginning, but the only aspect that interested Lawrence has concluded. Sex in itself and for itself is his fascination, and if this makes him narrow it also makes him shrewd.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We all desiren, if it mighte be, To han husbandes hardy, wise, and free,... And secret, and no niggard, ne no fool, Ne him that is aghast of every tool, Ne none avaunter, by that God above!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The city is always recruited from the country. The men in cities who are the centres of energy, the driving-wheels of trade, polit...ics or practical arts, and the women of beauty and genius, are the children or grandchildren of farmers, and are spending the energies which their fathers' hardy, silent life accumulated in frosty furrows in poverty, necessity and darkness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to war. Whilst the hand was still familiar with the sword-hilt, whilst the habit...s of the camp were still visible in the port and complexion of the gentleman, his intellectual power culminated; the compression and tension of these stern conditions is a training for the finest and softest arts, and can rarely be compensated in tranquil times, except by some analogous vigor drawn from occupations as hardy as war.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Although there have been witty big men--Oscar Wilde comes first to mind--wit and humor seem more in the province of the smaller ma...n. Chaplin, Keaton, the Marx Brothers were all small men. We expect a comedian to be small. He may also be fat. W.C. Fields was fat; so was Oliver Hardy. Fat is funny, small is funny. Lou Costello, of Abbot & Costello, was small and fat--a winning comic combination. Tall isn't funny, perhaps owing to its being too imposing, even slightly menacing. Tall and handsome conjoined are especially unfunny. One can always fall back on being the tall and silent type, of whom, in the movies, Gary Cooper was the apotheosis. But if one is small and silent, one is likely merely to be counted shy. Small men are under an obligation to do more talking; perhaps this is why so many of them are always joking.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And I'll wager in their joy they kissed each other's cheek (Which is what them furriners do),... And they blessed their lucky stars We were hardy British tars Who had pity on a poor Parley-voo,LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Felix Randal the farrier, O he is dead then? My duty all is ended, Who have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-han...dsome, Pining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it and some Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the aut...horitative statement of the reviewer.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One realises, with horror, that the race of men is almost extinct in Europe. Only Christ-like heroes and woman-worshipping Don Jua...ns, and rabid equality-mongrels. The old, hardy, indomitable male is gone.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »