Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes - Page 3

I cannot endure to waste anything as precious as autumn sunshine by staying in the house. So I spend almost all the daylight hours in the open air.

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

She could no longer borrow from the future to ease her present grief.

What would a man do, if he were compelled to live always in the sultry heat of society, and could never bathe himself in cool solitude?

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

Men of cold passions have quick eyes.

Mankind are earthen jugs with spirits in them.

A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.

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

The calmer thought is not always the right thought, just as the distant view is not always the truest view

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

Earth has one angel less and heaven one more, since yesterday.

Cupid in these latter times has probably laid aside his bow and arrow, and uses fire-arms -- a pistol -- perhaps a revolver.

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

it is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.

The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may going to prove one's self a fool.

I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!

Life figures itself to me as a festal or funereal procession.

There is an alchemy of quiet malice by which women can concoct a subtle poison from ordinary trifles.

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!

Do anything, save to lie down and die!

Moonlight is sculpture.

No, my little Pearl! Thou must gather thine own sunshine. I have none to give thee.

If mankind were all intellect, they would be continually changing, so that one age would be entirely unlike another. The great conservative is the heart, which remains the same in all ages; so that commonplaces of a thousand years' standing are as effective as ever.

The present is burdened too much with the past. We have not time, in our earthly existence, to appreciate what is warm with life, and immediately around us.