Hawthorne, Nathaniel
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Hawthorne, Nathaniel
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.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Conscience
Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Happiness
Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Happiness
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.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Company
A woman s chastity consists, like an onion, of a series of coats.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Chastity
All brave men love; for he only is brave who has affections to fight for, whether in the daily battle of life, or in physical contests.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Courage
We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Death and Dying
Our most intimate friend is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Friends and Friendship
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.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Patriotism
Generosity is the flower of justice.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Generosity
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?
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Energy
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.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Health
No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Honesty
Moonlight is sculpture.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Light
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.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Literature
Life is made up of marble and mud.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Life and Living
Labor is the curse of the world, and nobody can meddle with it without becoming proportionately brutified.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Labor
Mankind are earthen jugs with spirits in them.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Humankind
It is a good lesson --though it may often be a hard one --for a man who has dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank among the world s dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid of all significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Literature
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.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
New World
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.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Perspective
This world owes all its forward impulses to people ill at ease.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Progress
Yesterday I went out at about twelve, and visited the British Museum; an exceedingly tiresome affair. It quite crushes a person to see so much at once; and I wandered from hall to hall with a weary and heavy heart, wishing (Heaven forgive me!) that the Elgin marbles and the frieze of the Parthenon were all burnt into lime, and that the granite Egyptian statues were hewn and squared into building stones, and that the mummies had all turned to dust, two thousand years ago; and, in fine, that all the material relics of so many successive ages had disappeared with the generations that produced them. The present is burthened too much with the past.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Museums and Galleries
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.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Misfortunes
Nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities of a marvelous tale.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Story and Story-Telling
Sunlight is painting.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Painters and Painting
Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Selfishness
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.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Sculptures
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.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Shame
Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life of the affections as leaves are to the life of a tree. If they are wholly restrained, love will die at the roots.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Affection
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.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Heroes and Heroism
From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Accuracy
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.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
America
Our Creator would never have made such lovely days, and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond all thought, unless we were meant to be immortal.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Enjoyment
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.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Youth