Nathaniel Hawthorne quotes - page 4

He remembered how the night dew had fallen upon him,-how the dark forest had whispered to him,-how the stars had gleamed upon him,-a simple and loving man, watching his fire in the years gone by, and ever musing as it burned. He remembered with what tenderness, with what love and sympathy for mankind, and what pity for human guilt and woe, he had first begun to contemplate those ideas which afterwards became the inspiration of his life; with what reverence he had then looked into the heart of man, viewing it as a temple originally divine, and, however desecrated, still to be held as sacred to a brother; with what awful fear he had deprecated the success of his pursuit, and prayed that the Unpardonable Sin might never be revealed to him. Then ensued the base intellectual development which, in its progress, disturbed the counterpoise between his mind and heart. (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am! View quote
Nathaniel Hawthorne
To do nothing is the way to be nothing. View quote
Nathaniel Hawthorne
We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep. View quote
Nathaniel Hawthorne
What, in the name of common-sense, had I to do with any better society than I had always lived in? View quote
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens and wallflowers need ruin to make them grow. View quote
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Shall we never never get rid of this Past?... It lies upon the Present like a giant's dead body. View quote
Nathaniel Hawthorne
And there I sat, long long ago, waiting for the world to know me. View quote
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred! View quote
Nathaniel Hawthorne
It [the scarlet letter] had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself. View quote
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
Moonlight is sculpture; sunlight is painting. View quote
Nathaniel Hawthorne
It is a suggestive idea to track those worn feet backward through all the paths they have trodden ever since they were the tender and rosy little feet of a baby, and (cold as they now are) were kept warm in his mother's hand. View quote
Nathaniel Hawthorne
On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. View quote
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Never, never!" whispered she. "What we did had a consecration of its own. View quote
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The young have less charity for aged follies than the old for those of youth. View quote
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Only get rid altogether of your nonsensical trash about the beautiful, which I nor anybody else, nor yourself to boot, could ever understand,-only free yourself of that, and your success in life is as sure as daylight. View quote
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Thus it is that ideas, which grow up within the imagination and appear so lovely to it and of a value beyond whatever men call valuable, are exposed to be shattered and annihilated by contact with the practical. It is requisite for the ideal artist to possess a force of character that seems hardly compatible with its delicacy; he must keep his faith in himself while the incredulous world assails him with its utter disbelief; he must stand up against mankind and be his own sole disciple, both as respects his genius and the objects to which it is directed. View quote
Nathaniel Hawthorne
I seriously wished-selfish as it may appear-that the reformation of society had been postponed about half a century, or, at all events, to such a date as should have put my intermeddling with it entirely out of the question. View quote
Nathaniel Hawthorne
In a word, the heavy weight upon his spirits kept everything in order, not merely within his own system, but wheresoever the iron accents of the church clock were audible. View quote
Nathaniel Hawthorne
So long as we love life for itself, we seldom dread the losing it. When we desire life for the attainment of an object, we recognize the frailty of its texture. But, side by side with this sense of insecurity, there is a vital faith in our invulnerability to the shaft of death while engaged in any task that seems assigned by Providence as our proper thing to do, and which the world would have cause to mourn for should we leave it unaccomplished. (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
Poets have imagined no utterance of fiends or hobgoblins so fearfully appropriate as a laugh. And even the obtuse lime-burner felt his nerves shaken, as this strange man looked inward at his own heart, and burst into laughter that rolled away into the night, and was indistinctly reverberated among the hills. View quote
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Scattered... over the breasts of the surrounding mountains there were heaps of hoary mist, in fantastic shapes... or cloud, hovering in the gold radiance of the upper atmosphere. ...[I]t seemed almost as if mortal man might thus ascend into the heavenly regions. Earth was so mingled with sky... The great hills played a concert among themselves, each constituting a strain of airy sweetness. View quote
Nathaniel Hawthorne
God will give him blood to drink! View quote
Nathaniel Hawthorne
It is perilous to make a chasm in human affections; not that they gape so long and wide-but so quickly close again! View quote
Nathaniel Hawthorne