Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes
Happiness is a butterfly which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.
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 true.
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.
A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.
Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not.
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, then, after tottering on a pedestal, to step down, and aaside out of the main current, and fall among the proletariat.
A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.
A person who is known to have indulged freely in intoxicating drinks, even without getting drunk, exhibits a very undesirable propensity.
Remembering their own former habits, they used to say that the air brought with it a gust from other worlds.
The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one’s self a fool; the truest heroism is, to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it ought to be resisted, and when it be obeyed.
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 true.
But what sees the Astronomer when he no longer looks through the telescope? What draws the Astronomer’s attention now, what enchants him and occupies his thoughts at all times, is the immensity of the heavens, the marvelous order of the stars…
What other dungeon is so dark as ones own heart! What jailer so inexorable as unrequited love!
To handle a stethoscope demands in its possessor much the same skill as to handle a lariat does in a cowboy.
Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not.
Solitude is both our bane and our solace, our darkness and our light, our suffering and our salvation.
Affliction may be lasting, but it never sinks so deep as to shut God and eternity from our view.
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be writing a Novel.
Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart! Else it may be their miserable fortune, as it was Roger Chillingworth’s, when some mightier touch than their own may have awakened all her sensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, the marble image of happiness, which they will have imposed upon her as the warm reality.
Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.
Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.
It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.
The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratification of one’s family and friends; and lastly, the solid cash.
How strange it seemed to the sad woman, as she watched the growth, and the beauty that became every day more brilliant, and the intelligence that threw its quivering sunshine over the tiny features of this child!
If, in our moments of agony, agony, they should hail us with their sympathy and consolation, why, we would go back to the dark, and let them heartlessly perish there!
Mothers are, henceforth, put in their proper place. All of them, whenever there shall be occasion for either a wife’s or a mother’s part, will emerge from the shade of private life, and be fairly thrust into the broad, garish light of the public eye.
There is no law, nor reverence for authority, no regard for human ordinances or opinions, right or wrong, mixed up with the agony of human feelings, that is capable of stopping a woman in such a career as this.
To observe attentively is to remember distinctly.
Hold thy peace, thou foolish woman of scandal! answers Roger Chillingworth, sternly. It is not thy will nor mine that things should be thus!
What we did had a consecration of its own. We felt it so! We said so to one another. Hast thou forgotten it?
We have wronged each other, answered he. Mine was the first wrong, when I betrayed thy budding youth into a false and unnatural relation with my decay.
Better to fast and pray upon it; and still better, it may be, to leave the mystery as we find it, unless Providence reveal it of its own accord.
It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of tale with the moral of flowers.
Death is to be anguished over and lamented, but it is not to be grovelled in the dust for, after it has once passed by.
We do not always dream what is true; but there is hardly a truth which does not reside within us, as the wicked conscience is it bitterness.
No friendly, loving soul (except, possibly her old minister, the truth of whose large, simple heart compelled him to receive the polluted consciousness into his own, like a drop of venom into his vital centre)
Shouldst thou fail me in this, beware! His fame, his position, his life, will be in my hands. Beware!
It is my fortune of happiness and my destiny of misery! Fame, power, wealth, all that man has coveted or strove for, I have yearned after with an irresistible longing. Yet he has kept me alive through all, to-morrow would have been the first day of a new existence.
Women never do anything useful when they enjoy perfect health.
Should not history always be dictated by educated men rather than ghostly advocates?
What rankling torment to a young heart is withheld Handshake of an intimate? It is one of my sweet, sweet moments Which I have just recognized.
It seems entirely in accord with my own observation and The little that the rest of the world advances about manufacturer of woolens;
I hope that my long residence in Europe may not have left you hopelessly Americanized! I trust not, As your mother’s son, to find you infected with The principles of our Transatlantic brethren of the wool.
By electric possibility, is it arpble that a girl can live three hundred years? Yes, it is possible; / yea, It is either in London or in Afghanistan? Or a seaside resort along the sofa, In summer Or in the Manger, at Christmas?/ Green ocean och … oh…
Whether the Earth is the pivot of new foundations? Whether complex disaster prevails on the Earth? Whether the whole Earth is the paradise of haven or chapel? Bent or whole mix is slandered by the visions of the night. Bent or whole is wandering about.
Whenever I walk, I walk toward something; unceasingly I walk toward something. For example: The unconstructable and the out-of-reach. The anti-extremist psychosis: this is a most repugnant of anomalies. This will wane one of the hands, For I walk a province specially, Pertaining to oceans or any miniature seas.
I hope that dreams arise about mountains or rapacious animals? I wish that my sont is farther than yours? yet these are little compared to the desire for a slow friendship that could verge with a silent separation. It’s…. ooohhhh…
How in the name of all that survives and thrives on the planet, do you assimilate further details about the atmospheric? You have high hopes, but you must guard this view lest you should prepare to crouch, Should you also estimate hyssop?