“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.”
“Our most intimate friend is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature.”
Source: The American notebooks
“Moonlight is sculpture.”
Source: Passages from the American Note-Books (Annotated Edition)
“Mountains are earth's undecaying monuments.”
Source: Tales of the White Mountains
“The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.”
“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.”
Source: SAT Words from Literature - the Scarlet Letter
“Nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities of a marvelous tale.”
“You can get assent to almost any proposition so long as you are not going to do anything about it.”
“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.”
Source: The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Essays, Letters and Memoirs (Illustrated): The Scarlet Letter with its Adaptation, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, Tanglewood Tales, Birthmark, Ghost of Doctor Harris… (Including Biographies and Literary Criticism)
“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.”
“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.”
Source: The house of the seven gables
“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.”
Source: The Scarlet Letter - Second Edition: A Romance
“A high truth, indeed, fairly, finely, and skilfully wrought out, brightening at every step, and crowning the final development of a work of fiction, may add an artistic glory, but is never
any truer, and seldom any more evident, at the last page than at the first.”
Source: The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Essays, Letters and Memoirs (Illustrated): The Scarlet Letter with its Adaptation, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, Tanglewood Tales, Birthmark, Ghost of Doctor Harris… (Including Biographies and Literary Criticism)
“I do detest all offices - all, at least, that are held on a political tenure.”
Source: Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of
“Many writers lay very great stress upon some definite moral purpose, at which they profess to aim their works.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated)
“What, in the name of common-sense, had I to do with any better society than I had always lived in?”
Source: Complete Novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated Edition): Fanshawe, The Scarlet Letter with its Adaptation, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, The Marble Faun, The Dolliver Romance, Septimius Felton, Grimshawe's Secret and Biography
“This above all: be true, be true, be true.”
“Some illusions...are the shadows of great truths.”
“We sometimes congratulate ourselves.”
“Not yet hardened, many young die good.”
“My wife is - in the strictest sense - my sole companion, and I need no other. There is no vacancy in my mind any more than in my heart.”
Source: The Business of Reflection: Hawthorne in His Notebooks
“It will startle you to see what slaves we are to by-gone times-to Death, if we give the matter the right word! ... We read in Dead Men's books! We laugh at Dead Men's jokes, and cry at Dead Men's pathos! . . . Whatever we seek to do, of our own free motion, a Dead Man's icy hand obstructs us!”
“Happiness is like a butterfly.”
“We are as happy as people can be, without making themselves ridiculous, and might be even happier; but, as a matter of taste, we choose to stop short at this point.”
Source: Selected Letters of Nathaniel Hawthorne
“When romances do really teach anything, or produce any effective operation, it is usually through a far more subtle process than the ostensible one. The author has considered it hardly worth his while, therefore, relentlessly to impale the story with its moral as with an iron rod-or, rather, as by sticking a pin through a butterfly-thus at once depriving it of life, and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly and unnatural attitude.”
Source: Nathaniel Hawthorne: three complete novels
“Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a neatly-arranged and well-provisioned breakfast-table. We come to it freshly, in the dewy youth of the day, and when our spiritual and sensual elements are in better accord than at a later period; so that the material delights of the morning meal are capable of being fully enjoyed, without any very grievous reproaches, whether gastric or conscientious, for yielding even a trifle overmuch to the animal department of our nature.”
Source: Complete Novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated Edition): Fanshawe, The Scarlet Letter with its Adaptation, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, The Marble Faun, The Dolliver Romance, Septimius Felton, Grimshawe's Secret and Biography
“The world surely has not another place like Oxford; it is a despair to see such a place and ever to leave it, for it would take a lifetime and more than one to comprehend and enjoy it satisfactorily.”
Source: Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of
“If the truth were to be known, everyone would be wearing a scarlet letter of one form or another.”
“Writing can come naturally to some. Still, when it comes to good writing, this is true: Easy reading is damn hard writing.”
“It loves more readily than it hates.”
Source: Nathaniel Hawthorne: Collected Novels: Scarlet Letter / House of Seven Gables / Blithedale Romance / Fanshawe / Marble Faun: Library of America #10
“New England is quite as large a lump of earth as my heart can really take in.”
Source: Rappaccini's Daughter (Gothic Classic): A Medieval Dark Tale from Padua by the Renowned American Novelist, Author of
“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.”
“Truth often finds its way to the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practise an unconscious self-deception during our waking moments.”
Source: Young Goodman Brown and Other Short Stories
“The traveller knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick boughs overhead; so that with lonely footsteps he may yet be passing through an unseen multitude.”
Source: Young Goodman Brown and Other Short Stories
“But, irreverently consorting with these grave, reputable, and pious people, these elders of the church, these chaste dames and dewy virgins, there were men of dissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches given over to all mean and filthy vice, and suspected even of horrid crimes. It was strange to see that the good shrank not from the wicked, nor were the sinners abashed by the saints.”
Source: Tales and sketches
“Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome again, my children, to the communion of your race.”
Source: Mosses from an Old Manse
“The love of science to rival the love of woman, in its depth and absorbing energy.”
Source: Dark Tales (Illustrated Edition): Gothic Classics:
“Masculine observers, if the birth-mark did not heighten their admiration, contented themselves with wishing it away, that the world might possess one living specimen of ideal loveliness, without the semblance of a flaw.”
Source: The Birthmark (Unabridged): A Dark Romantic Story on Obsession with Human Perfection From the Renowned American Author of
“Let the attempt be made, at whatever risk.”
Source: The Birthmark (Unabridged): A Dark Romantic Story on Obsession with Human Perfection From the Renowned American Author of
“A screen... the scenery and the figures of life were perfectly represented, but with that bewitching, yet indescribably difference, which always makes a picture, an image, or a shadow, so much more attractive than the original.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated)
“It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility.”
Source: Nathaniel Hawthorne: Collected Novels: Scarlet Letter / House of Seven Gables / Blithedale Romance / Fanshawe / Marble Faun: Library of America #10
“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.]”
“But, all this while, I was giving myself very unnecessary alarm. Providence had mediated better things for me than I could possibly imagine for myself.”
Source: The Scarlet Letter
“There are many things in this world that a child must not ask about.”
Source: The Scarlet Letter (Sparklesoup Classics)
“Do anything, save to lie down and die!”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated)
“Death should take me while I am in the mood.”
Source: The Blithedale romance: By Nathaniel Hawthorne
“We men of study, whose heads are in our books, have need to be straightly looked after! We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.”
“In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves of our social life, somebody is always at the drowning-point.”
Source: The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Essays, Letters and Memoirs (Illustrated): The Scarlet Letter with its Adaptation, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, Tanglewood Tales, Birthmark, Ghost of Doctor Harris… (Including Biographies and Literary Criticism)
“Strength is incomprehensible by weakness, and, therefore, the more terrible.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated)
“Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.”
