Return of the Native Quotes

Quote 1: "The sea changed, the fields changed, the rivers, the villages, and the people changed, yet Egdon remained." Book 1, Chapter 1, pg. 3

Quote 2: Wildeve asks Eustacia if he should marry Thomasin; he declares, "I wish Tamsie were not such a confoundedly good little woman so that I could be faithful to you without injuring a worthy person." Part 1, Chapter 9, pg. 64

Quote 3: "She had loved him partly because he was exceptional in this scene, partly because she had determined to love him, chiefly because she was in desperate need of loving somebody after wearying of Wildeve." Book 2, Chapter 6, pg. 108

Quote 4: Clym's stay in Egdon has made him realize that his business in Paris is the "idlest, vainest, most effeminate business that a man could be put to." Book 3, Chapter 1, pg. 130

Quote 5: Clym speaks with passion, "I would give it up and try to follow some rational occupation among the people I knew best, and to whom I could be of most use." Book 3, Chapter 1, pg. 130

Quote 6: It is painfully evident to Eustacia that although Clym is embarrassed of the heathmen, he cares very much for his home--"It is the most exhilarating, and strengthening, and soothing. I would rather live on these hills than anywhere else in the world." Book 3, Chapter 3, pg. 142

Quote 7: "Though I should like Paris, I love you for yourself alone. To be your wife and live in Paris would be heaven to me; but I would rather live with you in a hermitage here than not be yours at all." Book 3, Chapter 4, pg. 152

Quote 8: Eustacia explodes, "If I had known then what I know now, that I should be living in this wild heath a month after my marriage, I--I should have thought twice before agreeing." Book 4, Chapter 1, pg. 185

Quote 9: Mrs. Yeobright asks Johnny Nunsuch to tell his mother that he had seen a "broken-hearted woman cast off by her son." Book 4, Chapter 6, pg. 220

Quote 10: Eustacia hears Johnny Nunsuch cry out, "She said I was to say that I had seed her, and she was a broken-hearted woman and cast off by her son." Book 4, Chapter 8, pg. 232

Quote 11: Clym furiously yells at Eustacia, "The day you shut the door against my mother and killed her." Book 5, Chapter 3, pg. 249

Quote 12: "She would have to live on as a painful object, isolated, and out of place. She had used to think of the heath alone as an uncongenial spot to be in; she felt it now of the whole world." Book 5, Chapter 7, pg. 267

Quote 13: Eustacia feels degraded and humiliated that she is fleeing with Wildeve as his mistress: "He's not great enough for me to give myself--he does not suffice for my desire!" Book 5, Chapter 7, pg. 271

Quote 14: "I have no money to go alone! And if I could, what comfort to me? I must drag on next year, as I have dragged on this year, and the year after that as before. How have I tried and tried to be a splendid woman, and how destiny has been against me! I do not deserve my lot! O, the cruelty of putting me into this ill-conceived world! I was capable of much; but I have been injured and blighted and crushed by things beyond my control! O, how hard it is of Heaven to devise such tortures for me, who have done no harm to Heaven at all!" Book 5, Chapter 7, pg. 271

Quote 15: "To her there were not, as to Eustacia, demons in the air, and malice in every bush and bough. The drops which lashed her face were not scorpions, but prosy rain; Egdon in the mass was no monster whatever, but impersonal open ground. Her fears of the place were rational, her dislikes of its worst moods reasonable. At this time it was in her view a windy, wet place, in which a person might experience much discomfort, lose the path without care, and possibly catch cold." Book 5, Chapter 8, pg. 278

Quote 16: Clym believes that he has done an unforgivable deed and his regret is that, "... for what I have done no man or law can punish me." Book 5, Chapter 9, pg. 289