Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes

Every crime destroys more Edens than our own

No summer ever came back, and no two summers ever were alike. Times change, and people change; and if our hearts do not change as readily, so much the worse for us.

If cities were built by the sound of music, then some edifices would appear to be constructed by grave, solemn tones,--others to have danced forth to light fantastic airs.

Some maladies are rich and precious and only to be acquired by the right of inheritance or purchased with gold.

The Christian faith is a grand cathedral with divinely pictured windows.

Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens and wallflowers need ruin to make them grow.

It [Catholicism] supplies a multitude of external forms in which the spiritual may be clothed and manifested.

But this had been a sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose.

No fountain so small but that Heaven may be imaged in its bosom.

A man--poet, prophet, or whatever be may be--readily persuades himself of his right to all the worship that is voluntarily tendered.

Death possesses a good deal, of real estate, namely, the graveyard in every town.

Death is so genuine a fact that it excludes falsehoods, or betrays its emptiness; it is a touchstone that proves the gold, and dishonors the baser metal.

The world, that grey-bearded and wrinkled profligate, decrepit, without being venerable.

Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared.

A few feathery flakes are scattered widely through the air, and hover downward with uncertain flight, now almost alighting on the earth, now whirled again aloft into remote regions of the atmosphere.

Come, therefore, and let us fling mud at them!

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?

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.

Death was too definite an object to be wished for or avoided.

The greatest possible mint of style is to make the words absolutely disappear into the thought.

It loves more readily than it hates.

We go all wrong by too strenuous a resolution to go right.

Families are always rising and falling in America.

Dream strange things and make them look like truth.

Sleeping or waking, we hear not the airy footsteps of the strange things that almost happen.

As a general rule, Providence seldom vouchsafes to mortals any more than just that degree of encouragement which suffices to keep them at a reasonably full exertion of their powers.

The sorrow that lay cold in her mother's heart... converted it into a tomb.

There are many things in this world that a child must not ask about.

Strength is incomprehensible by weakness, and, therefore, the more terrible.

Cannot you conceive that another man may wish well to the world and struggle for its good on some other plan than precisely that which you have laid down?

...Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office.

Just as there comes a warm sunbeam into every cottage window, so comes a lovebeam of God's care and pity for every separate need.

Let the attempt be made, at whatever risk.

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

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

It [the scarlet letter] had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself.

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

Many writers lay very great stress upon some definite moral purpose, at which they profess to aim their works.

If truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom.

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

Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind.

Unquestionably we do stand by our national flag as stoutly as any people in the world; and I myself have felt the heart-throb at sight of it, as sensibly as other men.

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

Happiness is like a butterfly - the more you chase, the more subtle, but if you stop moving and quietly wait for it to land on you.

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.

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.

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

We do ourselves wrong, and too meanly estimate the holiness above us, when we deem that any act or enjoyment good in itself, is not good to do religiously.

Who can tell where happiness may come, or where, though an expected guest, it may never show its face?

Nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities of a marvelous tale.