“What a sweet reverence is that when a young man deems his mistress a little more than mortal and almost chides himself for longing to bring her close to his heart.”
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
“I have come to see the nonsense of attempting to describe fine scenery. There is no such possibility. If scenery could be adequately reproduced in words, there would have been no need of God's making it in reality.”
“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.”
Source: Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of
“There is no such thing in man's nature as a settled and full resolve either for good or evil, except at the very moment of execution.”
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
“Man's own youth is the world's youth; at least he feels as if it were, and imagines that the earth's granite substance is something not yet hardened, and which he can mould into whatever shape he likes.”
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
“Easy reading is damn hard writing.”
“I wonder that we Americans love our country at all, it having no limits and no oneness; and when you try to make it a matter of the heart, everything falls away except one's native State; -neither can you seize hold of that, unless you tear it out of the Union, bleeding and quivering.”
“I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green.”
Source: Complete Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated Edition): Over 120 Short Stories Including Rare Sketches From Magazines of the Renowned American Author of
“Last night, there came a frost, which has done great damage to my garden.... It is sad that Nature will play such tricks on us poor mortals, inviting us with sunny smiles to confide in her, and then, when we are entirely within her power, striking us to the heart.”
Source: The American notebooks
“In the depths of every heart, there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide. But sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, those dark receptacles are flung wide open. In an hour like this, when the mind has a passive sensibility, but no active strength; when the imagination is a mirror, imparting vividness to all ideas, without the power of selecting or controlling them; then pray that your grieves may slumber, and the brotherhood of remorse not break their chain.”
“Every young sculptor seems to think that he must give the world some specimen of indecorous womanhood, and call it Eve, Venus, a Nymph, or any name that may apologize for a lack of decent clothing.”
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
“I love my mother, but there has been, ever since my boyhood, a sort of coldness of intercourse between us, such as is apt to come between people of strong feelings.”
Source: The Scarlet Letter and Other Writings
“Is it a fact-or have I dreamt it-that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time?”
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
“See! those fiendish lineaments graven on the darkness, the writhed lip of scorn, the mockery of that living eye, the pointed finger, touching the sore place in your heart! Do you remember any act of enormous folly, at which you would blush, even in the remotest cavern of the earth? Then recognize your Shame.”
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.”
Source: Nathaniel Hawthorne: Collected Novels: Scarlet Letter / House of Seven Gables / Blithedale Romance / Fanshawe / Marble Faun: Library of America #10
“The trees reflected in the river - they are unconscious of a spiritual world so near to them. So are we.”
Source: The Business of Reflection: Hawthorne in His Notebooks
“There is no greater bugbear than a strong willed relative in the circle of his own connections.”
Source: Nathaniel Hawthorne's Tales: In 2 vols
“Articulate words are a harsh clamor and dissonance. When man arrives at his highest perfection, he will again be dumb.”
Source: Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of
“I heard a neigh. Oh, such a brisk and melodious neigh it was. My very heart leapt with the sound.”
“Let us acknowledge it wiser, if not more sagacious to follow out one's day-dream to its natural consummation, although if the vision has been worth the having, it is certain never to be consummated otherwise than by a failure.”
Source: The Blithedale Romance
“He whose genius appears deepest and truest excels his fellows in nothing save the knack of expression; he throws out occasionally a lucky hint at truths of which every human soul is profoundly though unutterably conscious.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated)
“There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings as now in October.”
Source: Passages from the American Note-Books (Annotated Edition)
“A bodily disease which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part.”
Source: The Scarlet Letter
“Labor is the curse of the world, and nobody can meddle with it without becoming proportionately brutalized.”
“Echo is the voice of a reflection in a mirror.”
Source: Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of
“...and we have so far improved upon the custom of Adam and Eve, that we generally furnish forth our feasts with a portion of some delicate calf or lamb, whose unspotted innocence entitles them to the happiness of becoming our sustenance.”
Source: Ordinary Mysteries: The Common Journal of Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne, 1842-1843
“But she named the infant "Pearl," as being of great price-purchased with all she had-her mother's only treasure!”
Source: CliffsComplete The Scarlet Letter
“It is my opinion that a man's soul may be buried and perish under a dung-heap, or in a furrow field, just as well as under a pile of money.”
Source: The Blithedale Romance
“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.”
“Every crime destroys more Edens than our own”
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)
“Christian faith is a grand cathedral, with divinely pictured windows. Standing without, you see no glory, nor can possibly imagine any; standing within, every ray of light reveals a harmony of unspeakable splendors.”
“The greatest possible mint of style is to make the words absolutely disappear into the thought.”
“Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens and wallflowers need ruin to make them grow.”
Source: The Marble Faun
“Earth has one angel less and heaven one more, since yesterday.”
“What is the voice of song when the world lacks the ear of taste?”
Source: The Snow Image: The Devil World
“Come, therefore, and let us fling mud at them!”
Source: The Scarlet Letter - Second Edition: A Romance
“My heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household fire. I longed to kindle one! It seemed not so wild a dream.”
“Families are always rising and falling in America.”
“A grave, wherever found, preaches a short and pithy sermon to the soul.”
“No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land.”
Source: Novels
“Mankind are earthen jugs with spirits in them.”
Source: Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of
“This world owes all its forward impulses to people ill at ease.”
“Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared.”
Source: The Scarlet Letter & A Scarlet Stigma: Romance and The Adapted Play (Illustrated Edition): A Romantic Tale of Sin and Redemption - The Magnum Opus of the Renowned American Author of
“Death was too definite an object to be wished for or avoided.”
Source: The Scarlet Letter
“A writer of story books! What kind of business in life-what mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and generation-may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler!”
Source: The Scarlet Letter
“There is so much wretchedness in the world, that we may safely take the word of any mortal professing to need our assistance; and, even should we be deceived, still the good to ourselves resulting from a kind act is worth more than the trifle by which we purchase it.”
Source: Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of
“Eager souls, mystics and revolutionaries, may propose to refashion the world in accordance with their dreams; but evil remains, and so long as it lurks in the secret places of the heart, utopia is only the shadow of a dream”
“The inward pleasure of imparting pleasure - that is the choicest of all.”
“But this had been a sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose.”
Source: The Scarlet Letter & A Scarlet Stigma: Romance and The Adapted Play (Illustrated Edition): A Romantic Tale of Sin and Redemption - The Magnum Opus of the Renowned American Author of
“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.”
Source: The Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne
