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

“They stood in the noon of that strange and solemn splendor, as if it were the light that is to reveal all…

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

“ that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang…

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

“...the holiest among us has but attained so far above his fellows as to discern more clearly the Mercy which looks down,…

— 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,…

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

But she named the infant "Pearl," as being of great price-purchased with all she had-her mother's only treasure!

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

Articulate words are a harsh clamor and dissonance. When man arrives at his highest perfection, he will again be dumb.

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

The fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast of men.

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

Why are poets so apt to choose their mates, not for any similarity of poetic endowment, but for qualities which might make…

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

America is now wholly given over to a d--d mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while…

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nobody will use other people's experience, nor have any of his own till it is too late to use it.

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

“...as a mark of gratitude for his previous patronage, and a slight super-added morsel after breakfast, put likewise into his hand a…

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

“Thou are my only reality-- all other people are but shadows to me: all events and actions, in which thou dost not…

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

“It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in…

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

“The wrong-doing of one generation lives into the successive ones.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

It is not strange that that early love of the heart should come back, as it so often does when the dim…

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

But, irreverently consorting with these grave, reputable, and pious people, these elders of the church, these chaste dames and dewy virgins, there…

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

“The wet sidewalks gleam with a broad sheet of red light. The raindrops glitter as if the sky were pouring down rubies.…

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

“We must not always talk in the marketplace of what happens to us in the forest.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

See! those fiendish lineaments graven on the darkness, the writhed lip of scorn, the mockery of that living eye, the pointed finger,…

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

At almost every step in life we meet with young men from whom we anticipate wonderful things, but of whom, after careful…

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

Families are always rising and falling in America.

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

...happiness is not found in things you possess, but in what you have the courage to release...

— Nathaniel Hawthorne