Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes

There can be, if I forebode aright, no power, short of the Divine mercy, to disclose, whether by utt...

Possibly, he was in a state of second growth and recovery, and was constantly assimilating nutriment...

Why are poets so apt to choose their mates, not for any similarity of poetic endowment, but for qual...

That Jim Crow there in the window," answered the urchin, holding out a cent, and pointing to the gin...

Shall we never never get rid of this Past? ... It lies upon the Present like a giant's dead body.

What is called poetic insight is the gift of discerning, in this sphere of strangely-mingled element...

What's that you mutter to yourself, Matthew Maule?" asked Scicpio. "And what for do you look so blac...

Jim Crow, moreover, was seen executing his world-renowned dance, in gingerbread.

When he is cheerful--when the sun shines into his mind--then I venture to peep in, just as far as th...

An infinite, inscrutable blackness has annihilated sight! Where is our universe? All crumbled away f...

he seemed to be in quest for mental food, not heart sustenance.

As a general rule, Providence seldom vouchsafes to mortals any more than just that degree of encoura...

Our first youth is of no value; for we are never conscious of it, until after it is gone. But someti...

Strength is incomprehensible by weakness, and, therefore, the more terrible.

He had that sense, or inward prophecy,-- which a young man had better never have been born than not ...

Possibly, some cynic, at once merry and bitter, had desired to signify, in this pantomimic scene, th...

Angels do not toil, but let their good works grow out of them.

It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally quite as vain, or even more so, o...

A bachelor always feels himself defrauded, when he knows or suspects that any woman of his acquainta...

Death should take me while I am in the mood.

The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot confine her spectres within the dim...

I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the h

But year after year that summons, unheard but felt, was disobeyed. His one secret thought became lik...

Unable to penetrate to the secret place of his soul where his motives lay hidden, he believed that a...

Lo! there ye stand, my children," said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad, with its d...

All have some artificial badge which the world, and themselves among the first, learn to consider as...

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love.

Be it sin or no, I hate the man!

Like all other music, it breathed passion and pathos, and emotions high or tender, in a tongue nativ...

Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit ...

All brave men love; for he only is brave who has affections to fight for, whether in the daily battl...

Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it le...

Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect, whether he choos...

America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of...

The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratif...

That Archangel, now, " Miriam continued; "how fair he looks, with his unruffled wings, with his unha...

Mountains are earth's undecaying monuments.

Happiness is a butterfly which when pursued is always just beyond your grasp but which if you w...

A hero cannot be a hero unless in a heroic world.

Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect whether he choose...

There are few uglier traits of human nature than this tendency—which I now witnessed in men no worse...

The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally pr...

Sunlight is painting.

Happiness in this world when it comes comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit and it le...

Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling ...

It was no wonder that they thus questioned one another's actual and bodily existence, and even doubt...

To do nothing is the way to be nothing.

America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of...

Moonlight is sculpture.

Oh, for the years I have not lived, but only dreamed of living.

Our most intimate friend is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature.

The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self ...

Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.

Life is made up of marble and mud.

Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal ...

The truth seems to be, however, that, when he casts his leaves forth upon the wind, the author addre...

And as for Owen Warland, he looked placidly at what seemed the ruin of his life's labor, and which w...

She has lived and loved! There is no folded petal, no latent dewdrop, in this perfectly developed ro...

Then might I exemplify how an influence beyond our control lays its strong hand on every deed which ...

It contributes greatly towards a man's moral and intellectual health, to be brought into habits of c...

Happiness is a butterfly which when pursued is always beyond our grasp but if you will sit down ...

Calm, gentle, passionless as he appeared, there was yet, we fear, a quiet depth of malice, hitherto ...

Nothing gives a sadder sense of decay than this loss or suspension of the power to deal with unaccus...

I have come to see the nonsense of trying to describe fine scenery.

Is it a fact – or have I dreamt it – that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a...

In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvelous and merciful, that the sufferer should...

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.

Herman Melville came to see me at the Consulate, looking much as he used to do (a little paler, and ...

It is not good for man to cherish a solitary ambition. Unless there be those around him, by whose ex...

Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life of the affections as leaves ...

Cannot you conceive that another man may wish well to the world and struggle for its good on some ot...

Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.

We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream it may be so the m...

On Andrew Jackson: "His native strength compelled every man to be his tool that came within his reac...

The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself...

Pluck up a spirit, and do not be all the time sighing and murmuring!

...the Puritans compressed whatever mirth and public joy they deemed allowable to human infirmity; t...

Some attribute had departed from her, the permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman...

But never had their youthful beauty seemed so pure and high, as when its glow was chastened by adver...

That old woman taught me my catechism!" said the young man; and there was a world of meaning in this...

Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might have seen in this beautiful woman, so ...

A stale article, if you dip it in a good, warm, sunny smile, will go off better than a fresh one tha...

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

All that they lacked was the gift that descended upon the chosen disciples at Pentecost, in tongues ...

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you wi...

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and ...

A few feathery flakes are scattered widely through the air, and hover downward with uncertain flight...

Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared.

It is the unspeakable misery of a life so false as his, that it steals the pith and substance out of...

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

...Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if h...

Unfathomable to mere mortals is the lore of fiends.

The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds--the creaking of the trees, the howling of wild b...

Many people are seeking, at this very moment, to shelter themselves under the wing of the federal ea...

Would not the earth, quickened to an evil purpose by the sympathy of his eye, greet him with poisono...

The horrible ugliness of this exposure of a sick and guilty heart to the very eye that would gloat o...

In the little chaos of Pearl's character there might be seen emerging-and could have been from the v...

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

To the untrue man, the whole universe is false--it is impalpable--it shrinks to nothing within his g...

Preach! Write! Act! Do any thing, save to lie down and die!