Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes

224 Sourced Quotes

Man's own youth is the world's youth; at least he feels as if it were, and imagines that the earth's granite substance is something not yet hardened, and which he can mould into whatever shape he likes.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
A stale article, if you dip it in a good, warm, sunny smile, will go off better than a fresh one that you've scowled upon.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
In youth men are apt to write more wisely than they really know or feel; and the remainder of life may be not idly spent in realizing and convincing themselves of the wisdom which they uttered long ago.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin ye shall scent out all the places — whether in church, bedchamber, street, field, or forest — where crime has been committed, and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
The muddy tide of the Thames, reflecting nothing, and hiding a million unclean secrets within its breast … is just the dismal stream to glide by such a city.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
A few feathery flakes are scattered widely through the air, and hover downward with uncertain flight, now almost alighting on the earth, now whirled again aloft into remote regions of the atmosphere.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
There are many things in this world that a child must not ask about.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
I love my mother, but there has been, ever since my boyhood, a sort of coldness of intercourse between us, such as is apt to come between people of strong feelings.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Dr Johnson's morality was as English an article as a beefsteak.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Our Creator would never have made such lovely days, and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond all thought, unless we were meant to be immortal.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
And we have so far improved upon the custom of Adam and Eve, that we generally furnish forth our feasts with a portion of some delicate calf or lamb, whose unspotted innocence entitles them to the happiness of becoming our sustenance.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
If his inmost heart could have been laid open, there would have been discovered that dream of undying fame, which, dream as it is, is more powerful than a thousand realities.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
But this had been a sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers — stern and wild ones, — and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
When an uninstructed multitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
But she named the infant "Pearl," as being of great price-purchased with all she had-her mother's only treasure!

Nathaniel Hawthorne
There is no such thing in man's nature as a settled and full resolve either for good or evil, except at the very moment of execution.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Would Time but await the close of our favorite follies, we should all be young men, all of us, and until Doom's Day.

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

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