Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes - Page 4

The marble keeps merely a cold and sad memory of a man who would else be forgotten. No man who needs a monument ever ought to have one.

Salt is white and pure - there is something holy in salt.

Some attribute had departed from her, the permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman. Such is frequently the fate, and such the stern development, of the feminine character and person, when the woman has encountered, and lived through, an experience of peculiar severity. If she be all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the tenderness will either be crushed out of her, or—and the outward semblance is the same—crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show itself more.

Most people are so constituted that they can only be virtuous in a certain routine; an irregular course of life demoralizes them.

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

It was a day in early spring; and as that sweet, genial time of year and atmosphere calls out tender greenness from the ground,--beautiful flowers, or leaves that look beautiful because so long unseen under the snow and decay,--so the pleasant air and warmth had called out three young people, who sat on a sunny hill-side enjoying the warm day and one another.

We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death.

Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart!

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love.

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.

Mountains are earth's undecaying monuments.

Bees are sometimes drowned in the honey which they collectso some writers are lost in their collected learning.

She had wandered, without rule or guidance, into a moral wilderness... Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian in his woods... The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers—stern and wild ones—and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.

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.

I find nothing so singular to life as that everything appears to lose its substance the instant one actually grapples with it.

When scattered clouds are resting on the bosoms of hills, it seems as if one might climb into the heavenly region, earth being so intermixed with sky, and gradually transformed into it.

To the untrue man, the whole universe is false- it is impalpable- it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he himself is in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist.

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

Let the attempt be made, at whatever risk.

I wish I had the gift of making rhymes, for methinks there is poetry in my head and heart since I have been in love with you.

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

The love of posterity is the consequence of the necessity of death. If a man were sure of living forever here, he would not care about his offspring.

A grave, wherever found, preaches a short and pithy sermon to the soul.

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

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