Thomas Hardy
English novelist and poet
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
The writer's problem is, how to strike the balance between the uncommon and the ordinary so as on the one hand to give interest, on the other to give reality.
—Thomas Hardy, English novelist and poet, Notebooks, 1881
Posted on September 14, 1999 at 2:10 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Once or twice recently I have looked up a word in the dictionary for fear of being again accused of coining, and have found it there right enough — only to read on and find that the sole authority is myself in a half-forgotten novel.
—Thomas Hardy, English novelist and poet, quoted in Goodbye to All That, Robert Graves, 1929
Posted on February 4, 1999 at 6:09 AM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Purism, whether in grammar or in vocabulary, almost always means ignorance. Language was made before grammar, not grammar before language.
—Thomas Hardy, English novelist and poet
Posted on January 10, 1999 at 12:06 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
That man's silence is wonderful to listen to.
—Thomas Hardy, English novelist and poet, Under the Greenwood Tree, 1872
Posted on September 3, 2002 at 6:28 PM
WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Dialect words—those terrible marks of the beast to the truly genteel.
—Thomas Hardy, English novelist and poet, The Mayor of Casterbridge
Posted on April 26, 2002 at 10:30 PM
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