Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes

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Insincerity in a man's own heart must make all his enjoyments, all that concerns him, unreal; so that his whole life must seem like a merely dramatic representation.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
And what is more melancholy than the old apple-trees that linger about the spot where once stood a homestead, but where there is now only a ruined chimney rising our of a grassy and weed-grown cellar? They offer their fruit to every wayfarer--apples that are bitter-sweet with the moral of times vicissitude.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
If we take the freedom to put a friend under our microscope, we thereby insulate him from many of his true relations, magnify his peculiarities, inevitably tear him into parts, and, of course, patch him very clumsily together again. What wonder, then, should we be frightened by the aspect of a monster.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
As the architecture of a country always follows the earliest structures, American architecture should be a refinement of the log-house. The Egyptian is so of the cavern and the mound; the Chinese, of the tent; the Gothic, of overarching trees; the Greek, of a cabin.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Perhaps, if we could penetrate Nature's secrets, we should find that what we call weeds are more essential to the well-being of the world than the most precious fruit or grain.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
It will startle you to see what slaves we are to by-gone times-to Death, if we give the matter the right word!... We read in Dead Men's books! We laugh at Dead Men's jokes, and cry at Dead Men's pathos!... Whatever we seek to do, of our own free motion, a Dead Man's icy hand obstructs us!

Nathaniel Hawthorne
The best of us being unfit to die, what an unexpressible absurdity to put the worst to death.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Is it a fact — or have I dreamed it — that by means of electricity the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time? Rather, the round globe is a vast head, a brain instinct with intelligence.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
A singular fact, that, when man is a brute, he is the most sensual and loathsome of all brutes.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
This dull river has a deep religion of its own; so, let us trust, has the dullest human soul, though, perhaps, unconsciously.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
At no time are people so sedulously careful to keep their trifling appointments, attend to their ordinary occupations, and thus put a commonplace aspect on life, as when conscious of some secret that if suspected would make them look monstrous in the general eye.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Or-but this more rarely happened-she would be convulsed with a rage of grief, and sob out her love for her mother, in broken words, and seem intent on proving that she had a heart, by breaking it.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Cupid in these latter times has probably laid aside his bow and arrow, and uses fire-arms -- a pistol -- perhaps a revolver.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
My wife is - in the strictest sense - my sole companion, and I need no other. There is no vacancy in my mind any more than in my heart.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Just as there comes a warm sunbeam into every cottage window, so comes a lovebeam of God's care and pity for every separate need.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
We are as happy as people can be, without making themselves ridiculous, and might be even happier; but, as a matter of taste, we choose to stop short at this point.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
It is a little remarkable, that - though disinclined to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my personal friends - an autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Some maladies are rich and precious and only to be acquired by the right of inheritance or purchased with gold.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
The love of science to rival the love of woman, in its depth and absorbing energy.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Life figures itself to me as a festal or funereal procession.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
There is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps, through the whole of life; but circumstances may rouse it to activity.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
It is not good for man to cherish a solitary ambition. Unless there be those around him, by whose example he may regulate himself, his thoughts, desires, and hopes will become extravagant, and he the semblance, perhaps the reality, of a madman

Nathaniel Hawthorne
What we need for our happiness is often close at hand, if we knew but how to seek for it.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
At almost every step in life we meet with young men from whom we anticipate wonderful things, but of whom, after careful inquiry, we never hear another word. Life certain chintzes, calicoes, and ginghams, they show finely on their first newness, but cannot stand the sun and rain, and assume a very sober aspect after washing day.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Great men need to be lifted upon the shoulders of the whole world, in order to conceive their great ideas or perform their great deeds. That is, there must be an atmosphere of greatness round about them. A hero cannot be a hero unless in an heroic world.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
The heart of true womanhood knows where its own sphere is, and never seeks to stray beyond it!

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Genius, indeed, melts many ages into one, and thus effects something permanent, yet still with a similarity of office to that of the more ephemeral writer. A work of genius is but the newspaper of a century, or perchance of a hundred centuries.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
We must not think too unkindly even of the east wind. It is not, perhaps, a wind to be loved, even in its benignest moods; but there are seasons when I delight to feel its breath upon my cheek, though it be never advisable to throw open my bosom and take it into my heart, as I would its gentle sisters of the south and west.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
This greatest mortal consolation, which we derive from the transitoriness of all things-from the right of saying, in every conjuncture, "This, too, will pass away.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
The traveller knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overhead; so that with lonely footsteps he may yet be passing through an unseen multitude.

Nathaniel Hawthorne