Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes

These men deceive themselves," said Roger Chillingworth, with somewhat more emphasis than usual, and making a slight gesture with his forefinger. "They fear to take up the shame that rightfully belongs to them. Their love for man, their zeal for God's service - these holy impulses may or may not coexist in their hearts with the evil inmates to which their guilt has unbarred the door, and which must needs propagate a hellish breed within them. But, if they seek to glorify God, let them not lift heavenward their unclean hands! If they would serve their fellowmen, let them do it by making manifest the power and reality of conscience, in constraining them to penitential self-abasement! Would thou have me to believe, O wise and pious friend, that a false show can be better - can be more for God's glory, or man' welfare - than God's own truth? Trust me, such men deceive themselves!" "It ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

A few feathery flakes are scattered widely through the air, and hover downward with uncertain flight, now almost alighting on the earth, now whirled again aloft into remote regions of the atmosphere. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Every crime destroys more Edens than our own ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Life is made up of marble and mud. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

True; there are such men," answered Mr. Dimmesdale. "But not to suggest more obvious reasons, it may be that they are kept silent by the very constitution of their nature. Or - can we not suppose it? - guilty as they may be, retaining, nevertheless, a zeal for God's glory and man's welfare, they shrink from displaying themselves black and filthy in the view of men; because, thenceforward, no good can be achieved by them; no evil of the past be redeemed by better service. So, to their own unutterable torment, they go about among their fellow-creatures, looking pure as new-fallen snow, while their hearts are all speckled and spotted with iniquity of which they cannot rid themselves." "These ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

What a strange, sad man is he!" said the child, as if speaking partly to herself. "In the dark night-time, he calls us to him, and holds thy hand and mine, as when we stood with him on the scaffold yonder! And in the deep forest, where only the old trees can hear, and the strip of sky see it, he talks with thee, sitting on a heap of moss! And he kisses my forehead, too, that the little brook would hardly wash it off! But here in the sunny day, and among all the people, he knows us not; nor must we know him! A strange, sad man is he, with is hand always over his heart! ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings as now in October. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Yes, poisonous thing!" repeated Giovanni, beside himself with passion. "Thou hast done it! Thou has blasted me! Thou hast filled my veins with poison! Thou hast made me as hateful, as ugly, as loathsome and deadly a creature as thyself – a world's wonder of hideous monstrosity! Now, if our breath be happily as fatal to ourselves as to all others, let us join our lips in one kiss of unutterable hatred, and so die! ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

If cities were built by the sound of music, then some edifices would appear to be constructed by grave, solemn tones,
others to have danced forth to light fantastic airs. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Eager souls, mystics and revolutionaries, may propose to refashion the world in accordance with their dreams; but evil remains, and so long as it lurks in the secret places of the heart, utopia is only the shadow of a dream ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

The experiment, so far as its original projectors were concerned, proved, long ago, a failure; first lapsing into Fourierism, and dying, as it well deserved, for this infidelity to its own higher spirit. Where ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

He was not ill-fitted to be the head and representative of a community which owed its origin and progress, and its present state of development, not to the impulses of youth, but to the stern and tempered energies of manhood and the sombre sagacity of age; accomplishing so much, precisely because it imagined and hoped so little. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might have seen in this beautiful woman, so picturesque in her attire and mien, and with the infant at her bosom, an object to remind him of the image of Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious painters have vied with one another to represent; something which should remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, of that sacred image of sinless motherhood, whose infant was to redeem the world. Here, there was the taint of of deepest sin in the most sacred of quality of human life, working such effect, that the world was only the darker for this woman's beauty, and the more lost for the infant that she had borne. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

A modern child could teach old Hepzibah more than old Hepzibah could teach the child. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

It is a very genuine admiration, that with which persons too shy or too awkward to take a due part in the bustling world regard the real actors in life's stirring scenes; so genuine, in fact, that the former are usually fain to make it palatable to their self-love, by assuming that these active and forcible qualities are incompatible with others, which they chose to deem higher and more important. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

There can be ... no power ... to disclose ... the secrets that may be buried with a human heart. The heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them until the day when all hidden things be revealed. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Again, after a blank moment, there would be a flickering taper-gleam in his eyeballs. It betokened that his spiritual part had returned, and was doing its best to kindle the heart's household fire, and light up intellectual lamps in the dark and ruinous mansion, where it was doomed to be a forlorn inhabitant. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Some illusions ... are the shadows of great truths. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

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. ~ 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

There can be, if I forebode aright, no power, short of the Divine mercy, to disclose, whether by uttered words, or by type or emblem, the secrets that may be buried with a human heart. The heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them, until the day when all hidden things shall be revealed. Nor have I so read or interpreted the Holy Writ, as to understand that the disclosure of human thoughts and deeds, then to be made, is intended as part of the retribution. That, surely, were a shallow view of it. No; these revelations, unless I greatly error, are meant merely to promote the intellectual satisfaction of all intelligent beings, who will stand waiting, on that day, to see the dark problem of this life made plain. A knowledge of men's hearts will be needful to the completest solution of that problem. And I conceive, moreover, that the hearts holding such secrets as you speak of will yield them up, at that last day, not with reluctance, but with a joy unutterable. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

That old woman taught me my catechism! said the young man; and there was a world of meaning in this simple comment. ~ 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. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Sunlight is painting. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Mountains are earth's undecaying monuments. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

The holy and generous wish, that rises like incense from a pure heart towards heaven, often lavishes its sweet perfume on the blast of evil times. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Little, impalpable worlds, were those soap-bubbles, with the big world depicted, in hues bright as imagination, on the nothing of their surface. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

I wanted to wake you straightaway, but I knew I had to wait several hours to ensure you were safely recovered."
"What! How long has it been?"
"Five minutes. I got bored. ~ Jonathan Stroud

I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.
[Notebook, Oct. 10, 1842] ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Benevolence is the twin of pride. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Man is a wretch without woman; but woman is a monster-and thank Heaven, an almost impossible and hitherto imaginary monster
without man, as her acknowledged principal! ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

What a happy and holy fashion it is that those who love one another should rest on the same pillow. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Such loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

May not one man have several voices, Robin, as well as two complexions? ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

The streak of sunshine journeying through the prisoner's cell; it may be considered as something sent from Heaven to keep the soul alive and glad within him. And there is something equivalent to this sunbeam in the darkest circumstances; as flowers, which figuratively grew in Paradise, in the dusky room of a poor maiden in a great city; the child, with its sunny smile, is a cherub. God does not let us live any where or any how on earth, without placing something of Heaven close at hand, by rightly using and considering which, the earthly darkness or trouble will vanish, and all be Heaven. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

The child probably overheard their voices; for, looking up to the window, with a bright, but naughty smile of mirth and intelligence, she threw one of the prickly burrs at the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. The sensitive clergyman shrunk, with nervous dread, from the light missile. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

It is because the spirit is inestimable, that the lifeless body is so little valued. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Soul, no heart, no mind; nothing, as I have already said, but instincts; and yet, withal, so cunningly had the few materials of his character been put together that there was no painful perception of deficiency, ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

Is it a fact – or have I dreamt it – that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time? ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Clifford, except for Phoebe's more active instigation, would ordinarily have yielded to the torpor which had crept through all his modes of being, and which sluggishly counselled him to sit in his morning chair, till eventide. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Labor is the curse of the world, and nobody can meddle with it without becoming proportionately brutalized. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

My first attraction to writing novels was the plot, that almost extinct animal. Those novels I read which made me want to be a novelist were long, always plotted, novels - not just Victorian novels, but also those of my New England ancestors: Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. ~ John Irving

The bookworm of great libraries. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

How is it possible to sayan unkind or irreverential word of Rome? The city of all time, and of all the world! ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

This world owes all its forward impulses to people ill at ease. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

And now I begin to understand why I was imprisoned so many years in this lonely chamber, and why I could never break through the viewless bolts and bars; for if I had sooner made my escape into the world, I should have grown hard and rough, and been covered with earthly dust, and my heart might have become callous by rude encounters with the multi-tude ... But living in solitude till the fulness of time was come, I still kept the dew of my youth and the freshness of my heart ... I used to think that I could imagine all passions, all feelings and states of the heart and mind; but how little did I know! ... Indeed, we are but shadows - we are not endowed with real life, and all that seems most real about us is but the thinnest substance of a dream - till the heart be touched. That touch creates us, - then we begin to be, - thereby we are beings of reality and inheritors of eternity. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

My fortune somewhat resembled that of a person who should entertain an idea of committing suicide, and, altogether beyond his hopes, meet with the good hap to be murdered. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

He himself, on the other hand, with characteristic humility, avowed his belief that if Providence should see fit to remove him, it would be because of his own unworthiness to perform its humblest mission here on earth. With all this difference of opinion as to the cause of his decline, there could be no question of the fact. His form grew emaciated; his voice, though still rich and sweet, had a certain melancholy prophecy of decay in it; he was often observed, on any slight alarm or other sudden accident, to put his hand over his heart with first a flush and then a paleness, indicative of pain. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Drink then," he replied, still with the same cold composure.
"Does thou know mw so little Hester Pyrnne? Are my purposes wont to be so shallow? Even if I imagine a scheme of vengeance, what could i do better for my object than to let thee live-than to give the medicines against all harm and peril of life-so that this burning shame may still blaze upon thy bosom? ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

For, has not the world come to an awfully sophisticated pass, when, after a certain degree of acquaintance with it, we cannot even put ourselves to death in whole-hearted simplicity? ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

All that they lacked was the gift that descended upon the chosen disciples at Pentecost, in tongues of flame; symbolizing, it would seem, not the power of speech in foreign and unknown languages, but that of addressing the whole human brotherhood in the heart's native language. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

I sometimes fancy," said Hilda, on whose susceptibility the scene always made a strong impression, "that Rome
mere Rome
will crowd everything else out of my heart. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

A writer of story books! What kind of business in life-what mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and generation-may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler! ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

But there is an influence in the light of the morning that tends to rectify whatever errors of fancy, or even of judgment, we may have incurred during the sun's decline, or among the shadows of the night, or in the less wholesome glow of moonshine. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Oh Hilda, what a treasure of sweet faith and pure imagination you hide under that little straw hat! ~ 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

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. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

That Jim Crow there in the window," answered the urchin, holding out a cent, and pointing to the gingerbread figure that had attracted his notice, as he loitered along to school; "the one that has not a broken foot. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities of a marvelous tale. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Distil drops of bitterness into her heart; sometimes through that alchemy of quiet malice, by which women can concoct a subtle poison from ordinary trifles; and sometimes, also, by a coarser expression, that fell upon the sufferer's defenceless breast like a rough blow upon an ulcerated wound. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

It was a tender and heart-dissolving prayer, full of sorrow, yet so imbued with celestial hopes, that the music of a heavenly harp, swept by the fingers of the dead, seemed faintly to be heard among the saddest accents of the minister. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

To be left alone in the wide world with scarcely a friend,
this makes the sadness which, striking its pang into the minds of the young and the affectionate, teaches them too soon to watch and interpret the spirit-signs of their own hearts. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Generosity is the flower of justice. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

There are few uglier traits of human nature than this tendency - which I now witnessed in men no worse than their neighbours - to grow cruel, merely because they possessed the power of inflicting harm. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

London is like the grave in one respect
any man can make himself at home there; and whenever a man finds himself homeless elsewhere, he had better either die or go to London. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

She poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of his spirit. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

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. [Speaking of self-posed isolation in old age.] ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

O exquisite relief! She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom! By ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Puritans compressed whatever mirth and public joy they deemed allowable to human infirmity; thereby so far dispelling the customary cloud, that, for the space of a single holiday, they appeared scarcely more grave than most other communities at a period of general affliction. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Finding it so directly on the threshold of our narrative, which is now about to issue from that inauspicious portal, we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one of its flowers and present it to the reader. 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 a tale of human frailty and sorrow. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

But this had been a sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Women derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle. ~ 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

The trees reflected in the river - they are unconscious of a spiritual world so near to them. So are we. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

In an ancient though not very populous settlement, in a retired corner of one of the New England states, arise the walls of a seminary of learning, which, for the convenience of a name, shall be entitled Harley College. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Dream strange things and make them look like truth. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Yesterday I visited the British Museum; an exceedingly tiresome affair. It quite crushes a person to see so much at once; and I wandered from hall to hall with a weary and heavy heart. The present is burdened too much with the past. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

It was as if she had been made afresh out of new elements, and must perforce be permitted to live her own life and be a law unto herself without her eccentricities being reckoned to her for a crime. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Be it sin or no, I hate the man! ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

In my own behalf, I rejoice that I could once think better of the world's improvability than it deserved. It is a mistake into which men seldom fall twice in a lifetime; or, if so, the rarer and higher is the nature that can thus magnanimously persist in error. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

But the past was not dead. Once in a great while, the thoughts
that had seemed so vital and so active, yet had been put to rest
so quietly, revived again. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

Oh, how stubbornly does love, - or even that cunning semblance of love which flourishes in the imagination, but strikes no depth of root into the heart, - how stubbornly does it hold its faith until the moment comes when it is doomed to vanish into thin mist! ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

It might be that he lived a more real life within his thoughts ... ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Many people are seeking, at this very moment, to shelter themselves under the wing of the federal eagle; imagining, I presume, that her bosom has all the softness and snugness of an eider-down pillow. But she has no great tenderness, even in her best of moods, and, sooner or later,
oftener sooner than late,
is apt to fling off her nestlings with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a rankling wound from her barbed arrows. ~ 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

Though we speak nonsense, God will pick out the meaning of it. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Can man be so age-stricken that no faintest sunshine of his youth may re visit him once a year? It is impossible. The moss on our time-worn mansion brightens into beauty; and the good old pastor, who once dwelt here, renewed his prime and regained his boyhood in the genial breeze of his ninetieth spring. Alas for the worn and heavy soul, if, whether in youth or age, it has outlived its privilege of springtime sprightliness! ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

CHAPTER XX. THE MINISTER IN A MAZE CHAPTER XXI. THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY CHAPTER XXII. THE PROCESSION CHAPTER XXIII. THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hadst thou sought the whole earth over," said he, looking darkly at the clergyman, "there was no place so secret- no high place nor lowly place, where thou couldst have escaped me,- save on this very scaffold! ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

His error lay in supposing that this age, more than any past or future one, is destined to see the tattered garments of Antiquity exchanged for a new suit, instead of gradually renewing themselves by patchwork; in applying his own little life span as the measure of an interminable acheivement; and, more than all, in fancying that it mattered anything to the great end in view whether he himself should contend for it or against it. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

And we have so far improved upon the custom of Adam and Eve, that we generally furnish forth our feasts with a portion of some delicate calf or lamb, whose unspotted innocence entitles them to the happiness of becoming our sustenance. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne