Daily Inspiration Quote by Thomas Hardy

Hardy slips a blade into the Victorian idea that respectability is a fixed social contract. In one calm sentence, he gives poets their own jurisdiction: morals and manners that don’t answer to drawing-room etiquette, church sermons, or the blunt instrument of “custom.” The opening “Of course” is doing quiet, devastating work. It assumes the point is obvious, then lets you feel how often society pretends it isn’t. Hardy’s tone isn’t bohemian self-indulgence; it’s a cool assertion that artistic conscience is a real kind of conscience, even when it offends.

The subtext is a defense brief for transgression. “Custom is no argument” reframes the usual moral hierarchy: tradition isn’t evidence, it’s habit wearing a robe. For Hardy, whose fiction repeatedly dragged sexual hypocrisy, class cruelty, and rural fatalism into the light, the line reads like a preemptive rebuttal to censors and scolds. If a poem violates polite manners, that might be the point; politeness can be a way a culture hides its violence.

Context matters because Hardy lived in a moment when “moral” art was expected to reinforce social order. He knew how institutions disciplined desire and speech, especially around women, marriage, and religious doubt. By separating “morals” from “manners,” he implies that what society calls virtue may just be choreography. The poet’s job is not to move gracefully inside that choreography, but to expose the strings.