Nathaniel Hawthorne - Moment Quotes

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Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream: it may be so the moment after death.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
We men of study, whose heads are in our books, have need to be straightly looked after! We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
It was one of those moments—which sometimes occur only at the interval of years—when a man's moral aspect is faithfully revealed to his mind's eye. Not improbably, he had never before viewed himself as he did now.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
The moment when a man's head drops off is seldom or never, I am inclined to think, precisely the most agreeable of his life. Nevertheless, like the greater part of our misfortunes, even so serious a contingency brings its remedy and consolation with it, if the sufferer will but make the best, rather than the worst, of the accident which has befallen him.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Speaking of self-posed isolation in old age:
Nothing gives a sadder sense of decay than this loss or suspension of the power to deal with unaccustomed things, and to keep up with the swiftness of the passing moment.

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
Truth often finds its way to the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practise an unconscious self-deception during our waking moments.

Nathaniel Hawthorne