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Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes

American Novelist
Born On
1804-07-04
Died On
1864-05-19
Birth Place
Salem, Massachusetts, United States
Death Place
Plymouth, New Hampshire, United States
Birth Sign
cancer
Father
Nathaniel Hawthorne Sr.
Mother
Elizabeth Clarke Manning Hawthorne
Spouse
Sophia Amelia Peabody
Nationality
American
Education
Bowdoin College

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

Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.

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

Moonlight is sculpture.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Life is made up of marble and mud.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

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

Nathaniel Hawthorne

The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.

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

Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, this it overflows upon the outward world.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect whether he chooses to be so or not.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

Nathaniel Hawthorne

All brave men love; for he only is brave who has affections to fight for, whether in the daily battle of life, or in physical contests.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

What we call real estate - the solid ground to build a house on - is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Sunlight is painting.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life of the affections as leaves are to the life of a tree. If they are wholly restrained, love will die at the roots.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty; inaccuracy, of dishonesty.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Mountains are earth's undecaying monuments.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

A woman's chastity consists, like an onion, of a series of coats.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

A stale article, if you dip it in a good, warm, sunny smile, will go off better than a fresh one that you've scowled upon.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Our Creator would never have made such lovely days, and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond all thought, unless we were meant to be immortal.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!

Nathaniel Hawthorne

We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love.

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

You can get assent to almost any proposition so long as you are not going to do anything about it.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.

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

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

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