Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes

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No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!

Nathaniel Hawthorne
All his life long, he had been learning how to be wretched, as one learns a foreign tongue; and now, with the lesson thoroughly at heart, he could with difficulty comprehend his little airy happiness.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings as now in October.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
A writer of story books! What kind of business in life-what mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and generation-may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler!

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Many writers lay very great stress upon some definite moral purpose, at which they profess to aim their works.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
In an ancient though not very populous settlement, in a retired corner of one of the New England states, arise the walls of a seminary of learning, which, for the convenience of a name, shall be entitled "Harley College.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
What is there so ponderous in evil, that a thumb's bigness of it should outweigh the mass of things not evil, which were heaped into the other scale!

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Masculine observers, if the birth-mark did not heighten their admiration, contented themselves with wishing it away, that the world might possess one living specimen of ideal loveliness, without the semblance of a flaw.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
One picture in ten thousand, perhaps, ought to live in the applause of mankind, from generation to generation until the colors fade and blacken out of sight or the canvas rot entirely away.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
An unhappy gentleman, resolving to wed nothing short of perfection, keeps his heart and hand till both get so old and withered that no tolerable woman will accept them.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
I find myself at the extremity of a long beach. How gladly does the spirit leap forth, and suddenly enlarge its sense of being to the full extent of the broad, blue, sunny deep! A greeting and a homage to the Sea! I descend over its margin, and dip my hand into the wave that meets me, and bathe my brow. That far-resounding roar is the Ocean's voice of welcome. His salt breath brings a blessing along with it.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Though we speak nonsense, God will pick out the meaning of it.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
It was a day in early spring; and as that sweet, genial time of year and atmosphere calls out tender greenness from the ground,--beautiful flowers, or leaves that look beautiful because so long unseen under the snow and decay,--so the pleasant air and warmth had called out three young people, who sat on a sunny hill-side enjoying the warm day and one another.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
The marble keeps merely a cold and sad memory of a man who would else be forgotten. No man who needs a monument ever ought to have one.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
That pit of blackness that lies beneath us, everywhere... the firmest substance of human happiness is but a thin crust spread over it, with just reality enough to bear up the illusive stage-scenery amid which we tread. It needs no earthquake to open the chasm.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
A perfect pond-lily is the most satisfactory of flowers.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-pern, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Sleeping or waking, we hear not the airy footsteps of the strange things that almost happen.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
It is very singular how the fact of a man's death often seems to give people a truer idea of his character, whether for good or evil, than they have ever possessed while he was living and acting among them.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
If we would know what heaven is before we come thither, let us retire into the depths of our own spirits, and we shall find it there among holy thoughts and feelings.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be writing a Novel.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
When individuals approach one another with deep purposes on both sides they seldom come at once to the matter which they have most at heart. They dread the electric shock of a too sudden contact with it.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Methinks it is a token of healthy and gentle characteristics, when women of high thoughts and accomplishments love to sew; especially as they are never more at home with their own hearts than while so occupied.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
When scattered clouds are resting on the bosoms of hills, it seems as if one might climb into the heavenly region, earth being so intermixed with sky, and gradually transformed into it.

Nathaniel Hawthorne