Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Scarlet Letter (1850)

41 Sourced Quotes

View all Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes
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
We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
It contributes greatly towards a man's moral and intellectual health, to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvelous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
My heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household fire. I longed to kindle one! It seemed not so wild a dream.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it... She stood apart from mortal interests, yet close beside them, like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer make itself seen or felt.

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 is remarkable, that persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of society. The thoughts alone suffice them, without investing itself in the flesh and blood of action.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
To the untrue man, the whole universe is false — it is impalpable — it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he himself is in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist.

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
She could no longer borrow from the future to ease her present grief.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
If she be all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the tenderness will either be crushed out of her, or — and the outward semblance is the same — crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show itself more.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
A bodily disease which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
The sorrow that lay cold in her mother's heart... converted it into a tomb.

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

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
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
He had been driven hither by the impulse of that Remorse which dogged him everywhere, and whose own sister and closely linked companion was that Cowardice which invariably drew him back, with her tremulous gripe, just when the other impulse had hurried him to the verge of a disclosure.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
A throng of bearded men in sad-colored garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods, and other bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.

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
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
It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Among many morals which press upon us from the poor minister's miserable experience, we put only this into a sentence: — "Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!"

Nathaniel Hawthorne
If truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom...

Nathaniel Hawthorne
"Never, never!" whispered she. "What we did had a consecration of its own."

Nathaniel Hawthorne
It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another; each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his object.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
It is a good lesson — though it may often be a hard one — for a man who has dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank among the world's dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid of all significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart.

Nathaniel Hawthorne
There is no greater bugbear than a strong willed relative in the circle of his own connections.

Nathaniel Hawthorne